Arkansas has the weakest gun laws of any state in the country, ranking 50th in the Everytown Gun Law Rankings.
Lawmakers in 2021 repealed an Arkansas law requiring a permit to carry a concealed weapon in public and in 2023 amended the law to clarify that concealed carry licensing is solely to allow reciprocity for licensees who travel to other states that require a permit to carry a concealed handgun. Act 777 also specifies that a person is not required to obtain a license to carry a concealed handgun in Arkansas.
According to Everytown, Arkansas has the 9th-highest rate of gun deaths in the US. In an average year, 638 people die by guns and another 1,247 people are wounded in Arkansas.
So they’ve got the weakest gun laws, which often leads to more civilians with guns… but there wasn’t a “good guy with a gun” present in this situation capable of taking this guy down?
On average, the rate of a vigilante saving the day is one in 7,000. There's no record of the number of shootings caused by bad vigilantes, though, so we don't know if that 1:7000 is a net-positive.
No, I’m saying that the right’s reason for lax gun laws doesn’t seem to mean shit, because even with the laws as lax as they are there, there still wasn’t anyone there to handle the situation. So maybe the laws being more strict would’ve kept the damn gun out of this nut’s hands.