Just Call 911: Escaped Convicted Contract Killer Murdered 5 Before Being Shot By Police

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Wanted poster provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows Gonzalo Lopez. (Texas Department of Criminal Justice via AP)

By Juan A. Lozano and Adrian Sainz, AP

Residents of Centerville had become more vigilant over the past three weeks as authorities searched for a murderer who had killed on behalf of Mexican drug cartels and who stabbed and injured the driver of a prison transport bus last month when he escaped custody not far from their small Texas town.

The search for Gonzalo Lopez, 46, ended late Thursday in a shootout about 220 miles (350 kilometers) away. He led officers on a brief chase in a stolen truck before he was gunned down.

Authorities believe while Lopez roamed free, he killed a man and his four grandsons, then stole an AR-15-style rifle and a pistol from their ranch near Centerville, as well as the truck he drove to Atascosa County, south of San Antonio, where he was fatally shot by officers.

This preview of a digital embed shows a map locating the events of an escaped Texas prisoner who killed a family of five. (AP Digital Embed)

“This is something that you can’t imagine ever to happen in a small community like this,” said Tuffy Loftin, 61, a pastor in Centerville who knew the family.

Centerville residents had been worried ever since May 12, when Lopez overpowered the officer who was driving him and 15 other prisoners near their community between Dallas and Houston. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is still investigating how Lopez broke free from his restraints and escaped a caged area of the bus where he had been held.

Following his escape, law enforcement vigorously patrolled Highway 7 and other roads in Centerville, escorting many of the city’s nearly 1,000 residents to their homes to ensure they felt safe.

Jean Davis, 70, who owns a feed and fertilizer store on the east side of town, said her husband wanted her to take a rifle and pistol to work, but she refused.

“The town has really been on edge, especially that first 10 days when he was out missing and nobody knew where he was,” said Davis, who lives about 15 miles (24 kilometers) away in Buffalo.

State troopers, Texas Department of Criminal Justice officers, the U.S. Marshals service and sheriff’s deputies from Leon County — which includes Centerville — searched the area for Lopez for weeks with no luck.

Concerns over his whereabouts were justified: Lopez’s long criminal history included convictions for capital murder, attempted capital murder, kidnapping and aggravated assault. Authorities said he belonged to the Mexican Mafia, which is a prison gang, and was a contract killer for at least two drug cartels.

In a confession to authorities, Lopez said he had been on his way to Laredo to kill a restaurant and bar owner for the Mileno drug cartel from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, in 2004 when he became embroiled in a shootout with deputies who tried to stop his vehicle.

Lopez escaped to Mexico with the help of the Mexican Mafia.

In March 2005, Lopez said he was contracted by La Mana drug cartel from Tamaulipas, Mexico, to kidnap a man named Lupe Ramirez from Weslaco in South Texas because he owed the cartel $40,000, according to court records.

Lopez and another person kidnapped Ramirez and left him “hog tied in an outside room of my mom’s residence” as they went to pick up money and marijuana that Ramirez’s family had left for them, according to court records. Lopez later bludgeoned Ramirez’s head with a pickaxe and buried his body in a desert.

Lopez had been serving a life sentence for capital murder for Ramirez’s death and a life sentence for attempted capital murder for the 2004 shootout with deputies, when he escaped from the prison bus.

Authorities maintained nearly 40 roving patrols, believing he remained in the area around Centerville, possibly entering unoccupied structures to look for food, water and clothing, said Jason Clark, spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

At around 6 p.m. on Thursday, authorities went to a home near Centerville for a welfare check and discovered five bodies. In a statement, their family identified the dead as 66-year-old Mark Collins, and his four grandsons: Waylon Collins, 18; Carson Collins, 16; Hudson Collins, 11; and Bryson Collins, 11. Waylon, Carson and Hudson were brothers and Bryson was their cousin.

This undated photo provided by the family via Houston Northwest Church shows Mark Collins. Collins was one of the people authorities believe was killed by Gonzalo Lopez, 46, a convicted murderer who escaped from prison. (Family Photo/Courtesy of Houston Northwest Church via AP)

“These precious people who loved and were loved by so many, will never be forgotten,” the Collins family said in a statement. Steve Bezner, the family’s pastor, described the Houston area family as having “the greatest character, the deepest faith and unrelenting kindness and love.”

At a Friday afternoon news conference, Andy Kahan, the director of victim services and advocacy for Crime Stoppers of Houston, called the family’s killing “absolutely one of the most gut-wrenching scenarios that I’ve dealt with and I’ve seen a lot and been through a lot.”

The Tomball school district in suburban Houston said Friday that the grandchildren were students in its district.

Loftin, a pastor at the Cowboy Church of Leon County, said he used to go to the family’s ranch, which also features a “beautiful fishing lake and a pier,” to help with cattle management. He called them “good, salt of the earth people.”

Authorities believe Lopez confronted the family on Thursday. The Leon County Sheriff’s Office has not specified how they were killed.

Authorities say Lopez took several firearms from the home as well as the family’s white Chevy truck and fled. Law enforcement spotted him just before 10 p.m. in Atascosa County.

Officers with Jourdanton police used spike strips to flatten the truck’s tires, but Lopez kept driving, firing the rifle through a truck window before hitting two telephone poles and a fence, said Atascosa County Sheriff David Soward.

Lopez “exited the stolen pickup truck armed with a rifle and handgun and reportedly fired at officers,” Soward said. Four officers returned fire, killing Lopez.

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109 COMMENTS

  1. Gee you think a secure border or at least capital punishment would’ve prevented the deaths of five more normal people??

    • Capital punishment has had NO observeable effect on MURDER in the USA. IT’s become nothing more than an instrument of REVENGE so why no just bloody well admit it? the carrying of arms for self defence has also had no discernible effect either. The figures just go up and up and keep pace with the number of available firearms on the streets. THe nimber of gun crimes prevented by armed ordinary citizens is statistically so small as to, be irrelefvant compared to the overall rates of guncrime, The carrying of handguns for ‘self defence and their attempted use is far more likley to get the carrier killed or injured than it is to stop the crime.

      • Albert Hall, British Subject, Ah, do you know of any executed murderer who ever came back to do it again? Call it revenge, call it whatever your little heart desires.
        The carrying of a firearm does in fact show results where it is permitted here in the US. Good guys take out bad guys all the time.
        Psst! There is no such thing as “gun crime” as a gun cannot commit a crime?

        • 𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥 𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐄𝐘 ($𝟓𝟓𝟎 𝐭𝐨 $𝟕𝟓𝟎 / 𝐡𝐫) 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐦𝐲 𝐥𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐨𝐩. 𝐋𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐡 𝐈 𝐆𝐎𝐓 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐧𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝟖𝟓𝟎𝟎𝟎$, 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐢𝐬 𝐬𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝, 𝐝𝐨𝐧’𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐠𝐨 𝐎𝐅𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐄, 𝐈𝐭𝐬 𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐣𝐨𝐛. 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐚𝐟𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐣𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐉𝐎𝐁. 𝐈 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐅𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐃 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐫 𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐄…..,

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        • Though it’s true that intended victims or bystanders killing would-be murderers is rare. But that misses the point. Most of the time, a violent criminal confronted with an armed victim flees. And if not, very few violent criminals will persist when their intended victim actually starts shooting. The argument that rates of criminals killed in defensive gun uses is low is factually correct, but intentionally misleading.

        • Studies have also shown (refer to US Institute of Medicine report commissioned by the Obama admin after the Sandy Hook shooting) that of three categories of response to attack: 1) not resisting, 2) fighting back without a firearm, 3) fighting back with a firearm, the odds of death or serious injury was 1 > 2 > 3. Of course, rate of death or injury for “3” was not zero. There are no assurances of coming out alive and uninjured when someone tries to kill you. But your odds are better if you have a more effective tool for self defense.

        • Retribution aside, it’s certainly effective in preventing repeat offenses by people like the subject of the article.

      • Your logic sucks and your statistics are BS….BTW Didn’t violent/deadly knife assaults with assault knives go up drastically in the UK….after they banned the guns?

        Let’s not forget the number of murders committed with “assault hammers” .

      • Capital punishment swiftly carried out is an absolute control on recidivism. BUT in order for capital punishment to act as a deterrent, it must be swiftly applied. Capital punishment carried out thirty and forty years after the commission of the crime most certainly is no deterrent. If anything, it encourages that crime. Criminals don’t have to worry about being executed. If caught the odds are that they will die of old age in prison unless they have their sentence commuted by fuzzy thinking judges who live in an ivory tower, far from the madding crowd. Sentenced on Wednesday, executed at dawn on Saturday in the intersection of the two main streets in town where the body is left hanging to be eaten by carrion scavengers.

    • The escaped convict broke into grandpa‘s vacation cabin and accessed his unsecured firearms, with which he later killed grandpa and his grandsons.

      Something something about safe storage laws.

      • Minor MINER49er, the Article does not say anything about the firearms being “unsecured” Are you sure about that? Were you there? Seems to me you are doing a hell of a lot of assuming, but then again, you usually do. The fact is you have no idea who the criminal got ahold of the AR or any other firearm.

        • If the firearms were secured, how was the criminal able to access them and use them to kill grandpa and his grandsons?

          And the vacation cabin was about 1 mile from the prison bus crash site, yet 300 officers including K9 teams were unable to locate the escaped convict for 3 weeks.

        • “The fact is you have no idea who the criminal got ahold of the AR or any other firearm“

          Really?

          “Authorities believe while Lopez roamed free, he killed a man and his four grandsons, then stole an AR-15-style rifle and a pistol from their ranch near Centerville, as well as the truck he drove to Atascosa County, south of San Antonio, where he was fatally shot by officers.“

          https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-03/fugitive-suspected-of-taking-truck-from-five-found-dead

          Walt, it was the incompetence of corrections officers transporting this convicted murderer that led to his escape and murder spree.

        • Minor MINER49er that’s right STOLE. It does not say how he stole it. You do know that criminals don’t pay any attention to a thing like a lock or a safe or a locked cabinet. Each is easily defeated if you know anything about such.
          You do love to do a lot of ASS-U-M(e)-ing, don’t you. Try coming up with FACT not conjecture.
          From the ARTICLE:
          “Authorities believe while Lopez roamed free, he killed a man and his four grandsons, then stole an AR-15-style rifle and a pistol from their ranch near Centerville, as well as the truck he drove to Atascosa County, south of San Antonio, where he was fatally shot by officers.” Nw show me where it says the gun was unsecured?

        • jwm, what has that to do with it? It seems that the AR-15 is alleged to have been owned by the victims. The bone of contention is was the AR “secured”? the question of where the gun came from is not an issue.

        • Locking guns in a safe doesn’t make them unstealable. It just means it’ll take an additional 10-15 minutes with a sawz all or angle grinder….. never mind the door…just cut a big hole in the top. Most are 12-16 gauge steel….not thick at all. if someone wants your guns…they can/will be had.

      • Minor, the guy escaped from a prison bus after stabbing a guard and you want to say it started when he stole two firearms, which I guess you have no clue how they were stored? After what I read about the gentleman, I wonder why, if he was in U.S. custody, was he still alive?

        • “you want to say it started when he stole two firearms“

          Nope, never said that. He was a convicted murderer being transported for a medical appointment when he was able to remove his restraints and escape a poorly maintained internal lock up on the bus, before he stabbed the bus driver with an unknown weapon that it some how eluded the facility inspections.

          Y’all really should make an effort to seek out the details of these incidents if you are going to comment.

        • Minor MINER49er Didn’t you claim that the escapee got the AR-15 which you claim was “unsecured”? There is no authority that is saying such. Maybe you should take your own advice?

      • The firearms were in the citizen’s property. No other sage storage was needed. They should have hanged this guy a decade ago. All immigration has been bad for America and Americans. We need a closed border, mass deportations, and a serious death penalty. But Debbie W would call that ‘rayciss”. She owns the massive murder rate committed by minorities.

        • “The firearms were in the citizen’s property. No other sage storage was needed.“

          Well that statement is obviously complete bullshit.

          If the firearms have been stored in a safe the escapee would’ve only had access to a steak knife, against two grown men as opposed to an AR 15.

          “All immigration has been bad for America and Americans“

          You know, that’s exactly what Sitting Bull said, right before he was murdered by the American government.

        • Minor MINER49er you know that to be a fact? Or are you assuming? For your edification, there is no information anywhere about how the gun may or may not have been stored. Again, you just love to ASS-U-Me.

      • Source? Doesn’t really matter though. If you want them and you are already there, what’s to stop you from raiding the tools to unlock “safe storage”? Also, the comment was directed at carrying a gun. Even if you come home and someone is already inside, what are the odds they will have the drop on you? Pretty high, right? Or do you tactically clear your domicile every time you enter? How about checking perimeters first? Would you also agree that chances are pretty high this person could have been waiting with a blunt object and still had the drop on the owner? But nice try pushing your rhetoric as usual. I mean, you did say it yourself – they could have only had a knife… so hiding in the house with a knife as a contract hit man is still pretty dangerous, right? I’d say the chances of two, or three, or even more grown men getting the drop on this guy are very slim. Especially if he waited patiently and silently, hidden in a spot waiting to ambush.

      • The only way those guns were going to do the victims any good is if the guns were readily available (preferably, one being carried) for use against the attacker. A professional hit man with the advantages of initiative and surprise vs. a normal family like that? If the guns were locked up and inaccessible, that’s in favor of the attacker.

        Any safe a normal person could afford won’t keep a determined criminal out for very long, but will effectively keep victims from using the guns in self defense. I’d be inclined to agree that, in most cases, it IS smart to keep firearms locked up when one is not at home. Again, most safes buy minutes, but that’s no reason to make it easy for them. At a more fundamental level, however, the responsibility for stealing property rests with the thief, not the victim. And not everyone can afford both a good safe and a firearm. That doesn’t negate their right to self defense. Blaming victims seems immoral to me.

  2. I don’t care if Mexico doesn’t have a death sentence, we do and this is ridiculous. Build the wall…rather finish building it.

    • Are you fricking kidding, build a wall for the ridiculous, outlandish cost of four billion dollars ??… said the party sending a quarter TRILLION to Ukraine for their border security.

    • What are you trying to do, keep all of the white supremacists in?? Haven’t you heard? The biggest threat is white supremacy. Don’t believe me? Check the FBI top ten most wanted. Then check all of the most wanted under the terrorist tab. I’m pretty sure they’re all white supremacists. That’s why they always flee to Mexico or the Middle East.

    • Wall is unsightly and expensive.

      Land mines and a few snipers are cheaper and far more effective for enforcing a border. If you weren’t brainwashed by Princess Diana you’d know this.

      • My idea is to relocate Fort Hood and a bunch of other Army, Navy, Marine, and Air Force facilities. Put them all on the border. Fence each one in, just like they do with any other base, post, or whatever. Heck, relocate Fort Knox to the border. Just turn a 5 or 10 mile strip of land adjacent to the border into one YUUUUGE fort. Give the guards and sentries orders to shoot to kill. Problem entirely solved.

        • Just make it a felony to hire illegals. You get convicted of hiring an illegal and you go to prison.

          Have an amnesty period for folks to comb them out of their employ. Then drop the hammer after a certain date.

          No schools. No hospitals. If they are caught they get dumped at the border.

        • to Jethro W. M.

          quote—–Just make it a felony to hire illegals. You get convicted of hiring an illegal and you go to prison.———–quote

          As usual our High School drop out knows nothing about how the system works. Republican Businessmen have been luring illegal’s here for decades to be used as slave labor on their plantations. Republicans are not about to pass laws that would put themselves in jail for hiring illegal aliens.

          The good news is that your produce and meat prices would be more than double if the Republicans were forced to hire American workers at livable wages.

          Your tax bills would be higher because illegals cannot get income tax returns nor get Social Security when they retire. They pay in to the tax system but get nothing back from it, only you do.

          And the Right Wing bullshit that illegals get welfare, free college, social security and free medical care is also pure bullshit as well. Illegals know damn well if they check into a hospital they will be caught being illegals.

        • Hell with pushing them across the border. Use some old C-130s and fly them to the southernmost point of Mexico and dump them there. That makes it harder for them to sneak back in. Oh, and capital punishment for any murder committed by a foreign national within the US.

        • “Just make it a felony to hire illegals. You get convicted of hiring an illegal and you go to prison.“

          I agree.

        • Bring all our troops joke from everywhere outside the Qestern Hemisphere. Use them to guard our borders. End all alliances. The only purpose of the US military is to guard our borders.

        • dacian, the Dunderhead. First it is already a Federal Felony to employ knowingly an illegal alien. Second, It is not Republicans who have been caught hiring illegals but your Leftist-Socialist cronies. Quit a few of them in fact.
          Minor MINOR49er it is already a Federal Felony. Rarely prosecuted however.

        • Making it a felony to hire an illegal won’t work? But making it a felony to own a 30 round mag will work?

          You are a special kind of mentally ill, herr dacian?

        • jwm, LOL, FIRST, it is already a felony to hire an illegal. SECOND, without any training you can change a 10 round mag about as fast as you can fire a 30 round mag. dacain the Dunderhead is not smart enough to realize that.

    • They may not have a death penalty, but people who cross the cartels sure seem to end up dead quite often.

  3. First, sympathy for the Collins family. It’s small, but all I can offer from a distance to a family I don’t know. This story strikes a chord with me. It occurred when I was a adolescent. Seminole County, GA. Neighbors. An entire family wiped out by escaped prisoners. It made an impression. Let the dust settle and the family grieve, but there will be lessons to be learned here when all is known.

    • Dude kinda looked like one-half of the fictional drug cartel twin Salamanca ‘Cousins’.

      More surprising to me, he escaped from a Texas prison transfer bus. For those unfamiliar, here’s a walk-through of one :

      • From what I understand, handcuff keys are all alike, you can buy them on eBay even.

        Could someone who knows explain why they couldn’t have different keyed handcuffs when transporting suspects?

        • one thought….. if the bus crashes or takes fire, the time delay in finding the correct key for every differnet pair of racelets would be far too long.

          In this case, it seems the operant creep was also confined in some sort of cage within the bus. Sort of like a cell inside the rolling cell. My impression is that there were not enough ALERT guards on that bus. Driver shuodl always, on a prison bus, be secured in a locked compartment. Perhaps the busses need to be redesigned to provide a separe outside entrnace to the driver’s compartment, which is then isolated from the rest of the bus. Doable, perhaps a bit costly, but FAR cheaper than the cost of this incident. Five foks would still e breathing today. if it saves even one life….”

  4. Even though it was three weeks the map says this sicario was making a beeline straight back to his previous employer.

    • He was too close to a major city. If he had switched vehicles and stuck to rural areas, he probably could have crossed our wide open border. Border patrol is overwhelmed dealing with the people coming in every day.

      • Even though everybody was looking for him… driving a stolen truck wasn’t the greatest idea ever….

        Considering he had help from the Mexican Mafia, I’d bet if he’d just grown a new moustache or beard and bought a bus ticket he would suddenly have looked like every other Mexican and would have made it home to Mexico undeterred.

        • Yesterday I was out mowing the lawn with my gun. My wife was in the house with her gun. All the doors and windows were locked. Anyone just showing up must be known to us. Everyone else must call ahead

        • “I’d bet if he’d just grown a new moustache or beard…”

          That takes weeks, he wanted *now*…

        • all true, but who ever said criminals make good decisions?

          I think this guy is in a FAR more approporiate and well deserved, VERY hot place these days. He would never be able to bluff the one Judge he faced as he bled out on the ground after being shot. He is now “enjoying” his final reward. And will be for a LONG time. Justice WILL always be served in the end.

    • Last Saturday night. 9.30 pm. My wife is taking the 7 and 4 yo grandkids upstairs to bed. They are spending the weekend with us.

      I hear the sound of metal against metal at our front security door. I approach the door and realize that someone is trying to get into our house. I pull my j frame from its pocket holster, flip the porch light on and verbally challenge the wannabe intruder. I do not have a vision port or camera on the porch so it is a blind spot.

      He continues working at the door so I become louder and drop a couple of F bombs. He mutters something through the door and continues his efforts.

      I prepare to engage and shout one more time at him. I hear him leave the porch. I cannot see him but my wife, who is upstairs, has a view of the street and says he doesn’t appear to be drunk and he’s wearing dark clothes and a hoodie.

      I need to fix that blind spot.

      There is no such thing as a safe neighborhood. Rural. City. No where is 100% safe. Always go armed.

      • “There is no such thing as a safe neighborhood. Rural. City. No where is 100% safe. Always go armed.”

        TRUE!

      • “I do not have a vision port or camera on the porch so it is a blind spot.”

        So is probably the back door. Cameras aren’t that expensive, but you don’t need an expensive low-light one if you have motion-sensing floodlights covering those areas.

        Please let us know what you come up with, it would be a good idea if I did that with the back entrance here…

      • Pitt bulls have been most of the reason I carry in the neighborhood/home. Sweet and loving till the “purebred” snaps and starts degloving whoever got it’s attention.

      • “verbally challenge the wannabe intruder“

        This is why I keep a few M 80s in a coffee can, just light one and toss it out the upstairs window onto your front sidewalk.

        Much better than shouting through the door, complete misdirection on your location and capabilities is always a plus.

    • Shire-man, nearly without fail, at sometime in their past , they have ingested dihydrogen monoxide, the world’s most unregulated compound – responsible for nearly 4000 unintentoinal deaths annually in the US. We need licensing and Government action on this NOW !!

      • It’s *highly* corrosive and the most powerful chemical solvent known to man, and people treat it so carelessly, some even buy it by the case and drink it straight, the fools! 🤣

  5. Bad news is sneaky violent perps like lopez ever get the drop on you it’s over. Good news is he is filled with lead and very dead.

    If justice would had been served on the behalf of previous victims lopez would have been executed and never given the chance to harm anyone again. Unfortunately someone dropped the ball and he escaped and that should have never happened. If a murderous perp has to be transported first sedate them accordingly and once back in a cage then they can be woken up.

    Members of the Collins family sound like good decent folks, no doubt they will be missed.

    • One thing to remember about a lot of these adult sicarios… a lot of them aren’t just your average thug, they’re actually professionals at their sleazy business. They’ve got military training, they’ve been taught how to win a firefight, and they know exactly what they’re doing.

  6. “he killed a man and his four grandsons, then stole an AR-15-style rifle”

    WTF is an AR-15-style rifle?

    • Most AR15’s are not legally allowed to be called “AR15’s.” ie, it’s any AR15 not made by Armalite or Colt.

      • Not exactly. The term AR-15 became fair game when the patents expired. Its just a marketing term now, not an actual rifle. It hasn’t been an actual rifle since 1964.

        • In 1959, ArmaLite sold its rights to the AR-15 to Colt. After modifications Colt rebranded it the Colt 601 for sale to the civilian market, however it still carried the Armalite markings ‘AR-15’ due to patent purchase contractual obligations to Armalite/Fairchild Aircraft Co. Then Colt decided to market their Colt 601 to various military services around the world, and were successful in landing a U.S. military contract with its military modified version of the Colt 601, it was adopted by the U.S. military in January 1962 and subsequently designated as the M-16 rifle in December 1963 and went into production and service in 1964. Its at this point in Dec 1964 where the actual AR-15 ceased to exist, the rifles manufactured for the U.S. military were never AR-15’s. The last of the civilian versions of the original AR-15 design were sold in 1964 as the Colt 601 civilian model.

          Colt later continued to use the AR-15 trademark for its line of semi-automatic-only rifles marketed to civilian and law-enforcement customers (not military), known as Colt AR-15.

          Its been a marketing term and trademark only since 1964.

        • The Colt 601 was the redesign of the Armalite AR-15, it eventually became the M-16.

  7. This is why we need the death penalty and it must swift with no decades long appeals process and no consideration for other dumber, weaker countries feelings. He should’ve been hanged along time ago in public and broadcast. His body placed on display at the border.

    • Correctamundo…anyone that needlessly/heinously murders anyone, seriously harms or violates a child, rapes multiple women, has over a natural life (any duration) sentence, multiple very violent crime sentences, or serious career criminals should be put to death…We have to stop feeding our monsters and making them into even worse monsters….We need a speedy death penalty…I don”t care if they feel pain or not, they can make it completely painless.. JUST DO IT!!…. The end result is all that matters…

    • Particularly for those who have killed deliberately in violent attacks, and certainly whenever a firearm was used as the murder weapon, the firing squad must be the tool of choice. No hood, face the small round holes, and delay the volleys long enough to give the dirtbag sufficient time to ponder what is soon to come his way, and perhaps also recall how HE had sent the same small items toward those whose lives HE snuffed out. Ten on the line, thirty cal or better, five rounds each. On signal fire at will. Video record, and live feed on somenews channel so other putative perps will plainly see what lies in wait for THEM should they ever take someones life unjustified.
      NEVER repeat the name of the executed perp on the media, he will die a nobody. Perhaps details of his crime.. murdered a family of five in cold blood, no provocation. Killed seventeen at his former high school. Killed nine at a church prayer meeting.

      Let his name be cancelled from the public memory. Let NO fame or notoriety ever befall him or enhance his memory. Maybe also refer to him by his prison number. No name, ever.

      • Damnatio Memoria should be used for spree killers. A PSA that states if you do a mass killing, you will not be famous or infamous. You will cease to exist. All public records of you will be expunged. The only records of your existence will be your birth and death certificates.

  8. FBI will classify as a mass shooting (4+ dead), school shooting (school age kids killed), AR15 involved (the POS stole one from the Collins house).

    But nothing about alien felon, repeat felon.

  9. LESSON TO BE LEARNED BUT OVER THE HEAD OF THE T TAG HILLBILLIES

    The Grandfather and the 4 students were killed with an AR 15 that was left laying around the house and not locked up in a safe. In short they were all killed with their own weapon.

    • dacian, the Dunderhead. Again, you are caught in an out right bold faced lie! No where does anyone in authority say that the gun was unsecured. When are you going to tell us the firing sequence of a cartridge? After all you claim to be a “gun expert”. Actually you are a BS expert.

      • Wrong Walter the Beverly Hillbilly

        He broke in when they were not home and waited for them. If the gun had been in a safe he would not have had the time to break in to it. Now I realize your pea brain skull has no reading comprehension so you will have to have someone explain all this to you on the 5th grade level.

        “Investigators believe that Mr. Lopez entered the ranch home sometime Thursday and “gained access to several firearms on the property,” according to a statement from the sheriff’s office Friday afternoon. They believe Mr. Lopez attacked the grandfather first.”

        https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/02/us/texas-escaped-inmate-gonzalo-lopez.html

        • dacian, the Dunderhead. you and the NYT just love to speculate, don’t you? if in one hand and you should have a pretty good idea of what is in the other. Safes and gun cabinets are defeatable. Again, your lack of knowledge is glaringly apparent. “gained access”? What does that mean? As usual you are writing in between the lines to fit your own control freak agenda. You see people like me deal in facts, not speculation. People like you deal in what fits your agenda.

    • No details have came out about that yet…he may have used hostages as leverage to obtain it…he may have murdered them in another way and found it…he may have knifed or beheaded them..those people are sick..

    • And dacian the stupid is a lying liar who lies. No definitive information has been released on how/whether the weapons were secured. But any MORON (other than dacian the stupid, who is a sub-moron) knows that a gun that is “secured” in a safe is useless for self-defense. Perhaps if the gun had been available, the grandfather could have used it to neutralize the attacker. What we know, for certain, is that had that weapon been “secured”, the family would not have been any better off. You’re pretty much an idiot, aren’t you, dacian the stupid???? FOAD, choad.

  10. Amid gun control debate, American minorities discuss uptick in firearm purchases: ‘People are waking up’ > https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/amid-gun-control-debate-american-minorities-discuss-uptick-in-firearm-purchases-people-are-waking-up/ar-AAY58hn?ocid=BingHp01&cvid=692b44b37ee940ede701c0f0e383fb5e

    This guy, and the thousands like him, are the reason gun sales have grown. The fact is no matter no matter all the “programs”, prisons, 911, police, government claims, gun-control advocate claims, etc… that people are finally waking up and realizing that when the time comes that there is no one there to protect them except them and they need to be armed to have at least a chance. The pandemic lock downs, economic pressures, and the general lawlessness that has been allowed to spiral to ever increasing numbers of incidents by democratic fools – have only increased the need to be prepared for family/self/home defense by good law abiding people because the criminals have been allowed to flourish.

    • “The security of a free state” necessitates an ar=med and skilled society. Call it what you will, that is the truth. With five people in that house, it seems SOMEONE should have been aware of the intrusion, and had access to arms, then USED them. Perp would have gotten his sorry self dead, before perp got five folks dead. That would be JUSTICE. God’s Word clearly states that when yuo are at home at night, with your family and household, and someone enters yuor home uninvited, yuo MAY surely strike him that he die, and there shall be NO bloodguiltiness upon you.

  11. But according to our resident Leftists, we don’t need guns to protect ourselves. This is just one example why we sure as heck do.

  12. The Kimberly Vaughn Safe Storage Act would assure that no one could use a firearm in self-defense of their home if a minor or prohibited person lives in the home, making the occupants easy prey for home invaders, robbers or rapists.

    “Specifically, the bill requires firearms and ammunition on residential premises to be safely stored if a minor is likely to gain access without permission or if an individual who resides at the residence is ineligible to possess a firearm.

    “The firearms and ammunition must be safely stored in one of two ways: (1) secured, unloaded, and separated in a safe and locked with a trigger lock; or (2) off the premises at a storage facility or gun range. Safes, trigger locks, and storage facilities must be certified by the Department of Justice (DOJ).” — bill summary Congress Gov.

    • Just curious. Is there a provision in the bill to pay for the government mandated and approved safe? If not, it will be basically ignored and is unenforceable. For the money spent tracking down and visiting every legal gun owner, they could just issue a safe to anyone that requests one.
      Most, if not all new, and in many cases used if purchased from an FFL, are sold with a gun lock of some type. And, most end up in a drawer, or trash can in short order.
      Of course, an unloaded gun is nothing but an odd shaped club.

      • There’s nothing in the bill about paying for the safe. There are, however, civil penalties if a minor or prohibited person gets the gun, and stiff criminal penalties if the gun is discharged. In all cases, the gun owner is punished — not the person who used it.

        BATFE is given responsibility for investigating reports of a person improperly storing a firearm, so it appears that snitching is required, and rewarded.

        Further, if the owner is convicted, he is ordered to pay for storage of his confiscated firearm.

        http://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/130/text

  13. This is a good example of having to be armed 24/7. At home, at work, in the bathroom, when sleeping, at all times because anything can happen at any time or any where, and no you are not paranoid if you are doing so. It becomes as easy as having your wallet on you, you don’t even think about it, or I could say to the young crowd as easy as having your phone with you and it might save your life long enough to call 911.

    • Maybe they’ll mention how it happened later.

      “The Leon County Sheriff’s Office has not specified how they were killed.”

  14. SHOULD HAVE BEEN EXECUTED WHEN FIRST CAUGHT .
    AT LEAST DID IT RIGHT THIS TIME SHOT DEAD ….MAY HE ROT IN HELL .

  15. I love how the leftists get on the websites and spread their worthless garbage to prove how stupid and anti American they are.

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