Let me guess: the NRA and its mouthpieces will spout off 'Guns don't kill people, people kill people.' You'll never get them to admit that the type of gun involved makes a difference.
I come from a responsible gun-owning family. Common sense says that an assault rifle is really only good for one thing: mass killing.
That's why our wise leaders don't allow
assault rifles to be sold to the great unwashed. He was carrying an AR-15, which does not provide for fully-automatic or burst mode. It's a semi-automatic. The only way to own an assault rifle in the US is to pay a special tax and have that particular weapon registered.
"Semi-automatic
assault rifle," like "government intelligence," is an oxymoron. The two terms are even closely related through the Federal Assault Weapons Ban, wherein FedGov introduced the term "assault weapon" to deliberately conflate assault rifles with more common semi-automatic rifles. "Semi-automatic
assault weapon," OTOH, legally defines a group of rifles functionally equivalent to others, yet restricted for for sale in the US primarily due to cosmetic differences. In the real world, "semi-automatic assault weapon" is a null set.
Semi-automatic actions are common in almost all modern rifles, including target and hunting rifles. The only real difference between an AR-15 and most modern rifles is that it's scarier-looking than a wooden-stocked hunting rifle, and has an appropriately scary name associated with the battlefield. "AR-15" and "assault rifle" get a different emotional response than "deer rifle." While some may be equipped with large magazines, that can also be true of other target and hunting rifles.
Not throwing around scare words to make a point strikes me as a basic requirement for responsible gun-owning families, IMO.
And in this case, the type of rifle involved made absolutely no difference. Any target or hunting rifle of an equivalent caliber would have been just as effective.