The real issue with this in particular is comfort and familiarity with firearms.
Callous BS! The real issue is whether the gun seeker's background is good enough for the country to allow him/her to have guns.
Which is the real problem in the US, whatever the right wing trolls claim about how they care about who gets guns in the US, the simple fact is there are so many holes in the system that it leaks like a sieve.
With almost one gun in circulation for every US citizen, anyone who really wants a gun is going to get one. And if they have completely dark intentions on how to use them like the Las Vegas and now the Texas shooters then a lot of people are going to die.
It doesn't matter what window dressing they put on this, as long as there are so many guns on the streets they will be used for violent crimes.
Crimes will still take place without the presence of guns, but if this lunatic had gone into this church with murder on his mind but only a knife then the damage would have been much less.
And the way that deeply troubled people in the US are treated makes this problem even worse.
Instead of arming the mentally ill how about actually treating them so they don't commit violence in the first place.
But that would violate the "everyman for himself" code of the republicans who then claim they're so upset when something like this happens. Most of the population of the US has been abandoned by the "elite" there who then condemn them when they succumb to the chronic dysfunction all around them.
In a culture based on violence at all levels with hundreds of millions of guns on the street and no real care for the percentage of people who are simply not able to cope with the stress this creates then violent outbreaks like this are inevitable.
Not only does the US need sane and enforceable gun control laws, it needs ways to create the kind of equality and social justice the Constitution was designed to create.
All men are not created equal when just a few are pulling everyone else's strings to make them dance.