A Nevada professor who shot himself in the arm last month in protest of U.S. President Donald Trump now claims the act was in protest of AR-15 rifles.
Mark J. Bird, employed since 1993 by the College of Southern Nevada as a sociology professor, shot himself with a .22 derringer in a campus bathroom on Aug. 28 and told responding officers that the president was to blame.
An apology letter from Bird, obtained by the Blue Lives Matter blog, instead says the incident was in relation to numerous other issues including global malnutrition, pollution and last year’s mass shooting at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas.
Addressed to College of Southern Nevada President Frederico Zaragoza and Vice President Margo Martin, the note begins by citing a CBS News story.
“A major reason is, derivative of the following October 20, 2017 CBS News story, the Earth had roughly 100 million malnutrition and pollution deaths in the past decade – and the Earth is on a course for at least another 100 million such deaths in the next decade,” Bird wrote.
The letter goes on to point out the Las Vegas massacre and the ensuing failure to ban AR-15’s as another motivating factor.
“Since the incident, there has been no national legislation banning bump stocks, banning civilian ownership of AR-15 type assault weapons, and the passage of universal gun background check legislation,” Bird added.
“Apparently it is about as easy to buy an AR-15 as a 2-shot derringer,” Bird continued.
Police say Bird brought first aid supplies with him on the day of the shooting and asked a student to use a blue rubber band as a tourniquet.
The professor also taped a $100 bill to the bathroom window “For the janitor” moments before shooting himself.
Bird, who has since been banned from the campus, was charged last month with “discharging a gun within a prohibited structure, carrying a concealed weapon without a permit and possessing a dangerous weapon on school property.”
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