He is a former army officer and describes himself as a “gun lover”. But after witnessing a mass shooting, he is now calling for tougher gun laws.
Former police officer Steven Spainhouer received a call on Sunday from his son who was at a Texas mall where a shooting was taking place. The son described in a panic how he tried to help a girl who had “no face”. The man immediately went to the mall and in an interview with CBS he tells what he was met with.
He arrived before emergency personnel and performed CPR on some of those who had been shot.
– The first girl I came across was curled up in the bushes and covered her head, so I felt for a pulse, pulled her head to the side and she had no face, he says.
The mass shooting took the lives of nine people. A man allegedly drove up to the mall in a car, got out and started shooting people indiscriminately. The shooter was one of the dead and must have acted alone. A police officer who was at the mall when the shooting started shot the shooter.
200 mass shootings this year
The attack is one of at least 200 mass shootings this year, and the incident has rekindled the debate about tighter gun controls in the United States.
– We need action in our legislatures at the federal and state level for better gun control. And I say that as a person who loves guns, he said in an interview.
Right now, Texas is considering a bill that would give elementary school children access to tourniquets—a pressure bandage used to stop major arterial bleeding. The state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, said in an interview that the real cause of mass shootings is mental illness.
Steven Spainhouser believes that is not the whole truth and now demands that the heavy weapons must be removed from the streets.
– I don’t know what problem the shooter had, but it wasn’t mental health that killed these people. It was an automatic rifle with bullets.