Austin’s Mayor: Saturday’s Shooting Shows We Have Too Many Guns in Austin

Austin’s Mayor: Saturday’s Shooting Shows We Have Too Many Guns in Austin

Austin Mayor Steve Adler

Austin Mayor Steve Adler (Photo by Laura Roberts/Invision/AP Images)

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, all of the experts who did their own audio analysis of the shooting in Austin Saturday night were wrong. The first five shots heard on the video were, according to Austin’s police chief, fired by the driver. Once in police custody, he claimed that, as protesters were banging on his vehicle, Garrett Foster pointed the AK rifle he was carrying at him. That’s when the driver fired five shots.

The three subsequent shots heard on the video were fired by another person in the crowd at the car as it drove away. That person was also also taken into custody. Both shooters, however, were released on Sunday. The APD is apparently leaving the incident — one in that resulted in one dead body and featured shots fired in a crowd at a fleeing car — to the local district attorney to sort out.

Meanwhile, Austin’s Mayor is busily wringing his hands about the number of guns in the city (and apparently in Texas as a whole). He has no earthly idea.

“You know, we have a protester that ended up getting killed, and that’s horrific. I am taken by the fact that in that split moment, in that second, we had three different guns that were at play,” the mayor explained. “We had eight shots, and, my, we have too many guns and we have to do better. I think just generally speaking, as a society and taking guns off the streets like this.”

– Austin Mayor Steve Adler in ‘We have too many guns’: Austin Mayor Adler discusses deadly BLM protest shooting