Last week’s mass shooting at Florida’s Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School has sent the gun control debate to a fever pitch, as the aspect differentiating this tragedy from Las Vegas, Orlando, Sandy Hook, or any of the others that have come before — is that this time, teenage survivors are stepping forward to demand change. The tide is even starting to turn for those who have staunchly supported Second Amendment rights.
Over the weekend, one such gentleman named Scott Pappalardo posted the above, nearly six-minute-long video of himself holding an AR-15 assault rifle: the same kind used to kill 17 people in Parkland. In what he captions his “drop in a very large bucket,” Pappalardo — who even has a Second Amendment tattoo on his arm — explains why he can no longer justify owning a weapon capable of mass murder.
When do we change? When do we make laws that say maybe owning a weapon like this isn’t acceptable in today’s society? And there’s a lot of blame people can put on, desensitizing with video games and the internet, bad parenting, mental illness… But ultimately, it’s a gun like this one that takes away the lives. This is the end result.
Pappalardo continues, explaining that he made the decision to get rid of his gun, but despite the fact that he could sell it for $600 to $800, doesn’t want it to fall into the hands of someone else’s kid who might bring it to school and shoot a bunch of people with it.
“I mean think about it, is the right to own this weapon more important than someone’s life?” Pappalardo asks, before calmly getting up from his seat and walking over to a metal-cutting power saw, and then sawing his gun clear in half, right through the trigger.
Pappalardo’s AR-15 may be just one drop in a very large bucket, but with any hope others will be inspired to do the same until maybe the bucket isn’t quite so large anymore.