BROADVIEW HEIGHTS, Ohio — Doug Murillo owns Stonewall Tactical in Broadview Heights, and says anyone who buys a gun at his shop gets a background check
"[The FBI runs] a nix background check to make sure that you have ... no conviction felonies, make sure that you don't have any violent misdemeanors or anything like that," he explains," or any mental adjudications issued by the court."
It is federal law, and the paperwork is not easy. The gunman from the deadly mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas bought his guns as soon as he turned 18, which is legal. So was the vest he was wearing.
"This is just a carrier for body armor," Murillo says of the jacket. However, in the case of Texas shooter, "there was no [protective] plate in there whatsoever," meaning it would have provided no barrier against response bullets from law enforcement.
The Uvalde suspect was shot dead (apparently by police) after he himself killed 21 people. But in the shooting in Buffalo that left 10 murdered, that accused gunman had body amour, and investigators say it shielded him from the bullets fired by a security guard and former officer who was trying to stop the massacre.
"Basically, [the plate] just slides in," Murillo told us while demonstrating. "Some hold the impact of a rifle and some the impact of a handgun."
Police, SWAT teams, and security details use body amour, but they are also available to the general public. It is unclear if the Texas shooter knew his empty vest would not save him, but the trend of using this for mass shootings is disturbing in itself, and just because Murillo sells guns and body amour doesn't mean he isn't affected by these killings.
"Those were babies that got killed," he said of Tuesday's rampage against second and third graders. "They did nothing wrong. They went to school ."
Murillo adds he isn't sure how to fix the problem, but would be horrified if he ever sold a gun to any mass shooter
"How do you fix it? I don't know," he stated. "Right now, we're doing everything that we can. We run background checks, we do everything that we can possibly do to assure [guns are] not getting into the wrong hands."