http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/crime/bs-md-harford-shooting-20180920-story.html#
Hawkmoon, the Sun article states that the 9 mm Glock was registered to and owned by the shooter.
Okay, that answers that. Still to be determined: Was the Rite Aid facility a "gun free" zone?
Interestingly (to me, anyway) -- one of the articles on this incident mentioned two other mass shootings, in both of which four people were wounded. One of them was in what was described in every article I could find as a "courthouse" in Masontown, PA. That's interesting, because PA state law is verey specific in that courtrooms are gun free zones, but if the courtroom(s) and associated offices are in buildings housing other facilities, only the court portion is gun free. I was finally able to figure out from photos that the building is the Masontown Borough Municipal Center, and the court is a local magistrate's court. The shooting occurred in the front lobby of the building, not in the courtroom or the judge's office.
So, either by accident or design, the articles (many articles) reported the incident in a way that implied the shooting took place in a gun free area when, in fact, it didn't.
From the Sun arrticle:
“Three workplace active shooting attacks in just the last 24 hours should spark outrage in every American,” former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords said in a statement Thursday. Giffords was shot in the head at a “Congress on Your Corner” event outside a grocery store in the Tucson area in 2011 and has become an anti-gun violence activist.
“If gun violence feels like it's become an everyday occurrence, that's because it is,” she said. “But every time you hear news of another shooting, remind yourself that this level of gun violence is not normal. No other developed nation experiences this kind of daily heartbreak and horror.”
Shooting are still not really "everyday" occurances in the U.S. but they are too frequent. But ... before we blame it all on eeeevil GUNZ!, let's stop and remember that prior to the Gun Control Act of 1968, prior to the Lautenberg Amendment, prior to the federal and all the state anti- "assault weapon" laws, Americans could buy all the guns they wanted anywhere and any time they wanted. And guess what? We didn't have mass shootings "every day." The problem is not the guns, therefor the problem must be something else. And it's figuring out what that something else is (or are, since it's likely not a single factor) that should be the focus of legislative intentions, not prohibiting law-abiding people from exercising a Constitutionally-guaranteed right.
