He didn’t have access to an assault rifle.
Aaron Stark had been bullied for years and was close to lashing out, “I was picked on and bullied. For being fat. For being smart. For not playing sports,” Stark writes of his time at Denver’s North High School. “So I got angry, and I started hiding weapons around anywhere I hung out at frequently. I had hidden around me knives, sticks, shanks, brass knuckles, whatever. I always kept one in arms reach.”
One thing kept him from taking the ultimate step.
Before he got the help he desperately needed, he gives credit to one thing that kept him from becoming a school shooter: He didn’t have access to an assault rifle. The now-defunct federal assault weapons ban, first passed into law in 1994, meant that it was virtually impossible for someone like Stark to purchase the type of weapon commonly used in mass shootings, including the Parkland school shooting.
“I didn’t have access to an assault rifle. I was almost a school shooter. I am not a school shooter because I didn’t have access to guns. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. But people with guns kill lots of people.”
To read more here and watch the video of Aaron Stark telling his story.
http://www.upworthy.com/what-stopped-this-man-from-nearly-becoming-a-school-shooter?c=hpstream
© 2026 – SoulSequel
18 responses to “What stopped this man from nearly becoming a school shooter?”
Columbine happened during the assault weapons ban, with handguns.
The assault weapons ban did nothing. Also, murder year over year has been declining.
Take your propaganda elsewhere.
@Weenis I will post whatever I want here. You care more about semantics than children getting killed by things you like to play with. You are a sick mother fucker.
@Gina
You’re mentally ill.
Nice twitter post from @nwg83. At least you finally admit that babies are dying when abortions occur.
@Weenis Your world is so black and white. I will blow you little brain right now. I am pro-choice and pro-life. I believe it’s killing a life after a certain amount of weeks to have an abortion, but that is my belief. I will not take the choice away from a woman if she has the need to have a abortion. Guess what, I would choose not to have an abortion. I care about humans in the womb and outside the womb. So fuck off with your bullshit.
Actually the bible states that human life begins at your first breath:
Genesis 2:7 is clearest. The first human became a “living being” (nefesh hayah, “a living breath”) when God blew into its nostrils and it started to breathe. Human life begins when you start breathing, biblical writers thought. It ends when you stop. That’s why the Hebrew word often translated “spirit” (ruah) — “life force” might be a better translation — literally means “wind” or “breath.”
@Gina
This is in reference to God creating life from dust, and then Adam’s rib.
Gen 2:7, actually, isn’t clearest. Psalm 139:13 is the verse used most often to show life beginning in the womb.
Also, you didn’t “block my little brain”. You showed your syncretism. You’re displaying your inability to logically have a thought.
Either abortion is murder, or it’s not. You can’t support murder and not support murder at the same time. That’s lunacy.
@Weenis Why is it harder to get a license to drive a car than purchase a gun? Would you approve of handling gun ownership the same as driving a car?
@Gina
I don’t think vehicles should be regulated. Unless a citizen is doing business across state lines, qualifying for interstate commerce, then vehicles shouldn’t need to be registered.
Vehicle regulation, as it is today, is unconstitutional. If we treated vehicle regulation as we ought, in a constitutional manner, then purchasing a gun would be more regulated than buying and driving a car.
You should read this SCOTUS ruling – https://wearechange.org/u-s-supreme-court-says-no-license-necessary-to-drive-automobile-on-public-highwaysstreets/
Regardless, just cause we have one bad practice, i.e. vehicle regulation, doesn’t mean it’s a valid argument to push for more regulations regarding guns by comparing it to an already bad practice.
@Weenis Libertarian. Aaaaah, I see. It will never work. You don’t trust people already. You trust people driving their cars with zero regulation?
@Gina
I play a game when I drive to work. It’s called “Insurance | No insurance”.
Regulations do nothing except regulate the law abiding, and put money in the pockets of greedy politicians.
@Weenis Let me guess, your game could also be called “racial profiling”. Insurance is another topic. Showing your ability to drive and your knowledge of the laws is important for the safety of our roads.
@Gina, that’s racist.
@Weenis
It is a reality that bans will not be 100% effective. Norway’s episode with Anders Breivik show this.
But there is ample evidence that effective from nations that have enacted more stringent gun control having seen a drastic reduction in the number of mass-shootings.
Norway has suffered 1 mass shooting since and including the 2011 incident, claiming 77 victims.
The US has suffered an average of over 340 mass shootings a year for a total of 2040 mass shootings since 2011.
The point is rapidly arriving where one cannot tout the necessity of having such limited regulations on the preferred weapons for these terrorist acts, and remain aligned with rationality and affiliated with the Human race.
I agree that we should take away guns from the people. But, we also need to do so with the police. As England does.
Secondarily, our justice system and school systems remain medieval. I do not hate to say it, but almost do, these systems are creating shooters and criminals. Modern cinema is helping to change the systems, but change is happening too slowly.
All of this is Trump and his follower’s fault, however.
You don’t see liberals out there beating up kids and loving murder. That is a Trump and his follower’s thing.
This is a good way to start a war.
@Weenis All the guns in your house will not stand up against tanks and drones. It would be a very short war.
@Gina
There are some 100mil gun owners in the US. Do you really think that the government is going to drone 1/3 of the population?
Do you really think that if the government started collecting everyone’s guns, that the military would turn against the citizenry? You do understand that they’ve sworn an oath to uphold the constitution of the US, against any enemies foreign _or domestic_, right?
You know that the citizenry of the US constitutes the largest army on the planet, right? And even larger than every single government army combined, right?
Also, you saw how the war on terror worked out, with drones and tanks, right? And how a bunch of uneducated pedophile towel heads and camel jocky’s are still able to elude the drones and tanks you’re so hyped up about.
If even 10% of all gun owners in America said “no”, it’d be a bad day, and it would literally start a war.
We should best avoid this at all costs.
@Weenis
“Do you really think that the government is going to drone 1/3 of the population?”
Hey, isn’t the prime reason y’all say you need the guns is because you hold the government as evil enough to perpetrate this kind of assault on the citizenry?
Consider again, the horrendous cost in being just an ideologue over being a rational thinker.
@Weenis
Only if one side holds that war is the only viable solution to the issues Humans have showed great success at working out without the appalling casualties of war.
Which would mean perfecting the art of peace rather than just flooding a society with the implements of war.