TUSTIN — After last week’s mass shooting at a Florida high school, Rodd Mann decided he didn’t want any part of an AR-15.
So on Friday, Feb. 16, Mann showed up at the Tustin Police Department with an open box containing the pieces of a partially assembled rifle.
“I told the people behind the window, ‘I’m here to surrender my AR-15,'” Mann, 64, of Tustin, said. “They just kind of stared and me, and then one of them said, ‘Oooo-kaaaay. Can I ask why?'”
The answer to that question was too complicated for a brief explanation. So Mann took to social media to elaborate in a reflection titled, “Why I Surrendered My AR-15 Today.”
“This week’s mass shooting … where a lone gunman opened fire on students and staff, killing 17 and injuring 15, has distressingly similar details,” Mann wrote. “Each incident ends the same. A lot of press conferences where people express outrage while extending their ‘thoughts and prayers’ to the grieving. Then things finally quiet down and nothing else happens. Until the next one.”
Mann, a retired computer technologist, had bought the gun parts he surrendered on the internet for a father-son project with 16-year-old Dion.
“My son wanted to build a gun from scratch, and an AR-15 has lots of parts so it offers a challenge,” Mann said.
Dion Mann, a student at Orange Lutheran High, developed an interest in target practice as a Naval Sea Cadet. “He excels in marksmanship,” his father said.
Growing up in Wisconsin among hunters, Rodd Mann learned an appreciation for guns, he said. When Dion asked for one last year, he signed them both up for a gun safety class before purchasing a pistol and a shotgun.
Next came the AR-15 hobby. The tinkerers still needed to order a couple of more pieces to complete their semiautomatic.
But with the tragic news of Feb. 14, Rodd Mann lost all desire to perfect the rifle, which is the same kind used at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.
“Each mass shooting, it’s the same story: AR-15, AR-15, AR-15,” Mann said. “I read every name of the kids who died, and cried each time.”
Mann talked to his son about getting rid of their almost-built rifle, which ran up a tab of more than $1,000.
“Dion suggested we sell it to a gun shop to recover some of our money,” Mann said. “But selling it wouldn’t guarantee the weapon could never be used in a bad way.”
Tustin Police Chief Charlie Celano said people often turn over guns inherited from relatives. “But it’s unusual for someone who purchased the gun himself to bring it in for us to destroy,” he said.
There are news reports of a Florida man surrendering his gun to authorities and a New York gun owner posted a YouTube video of himself destroying his rifle.
Response to Mann’s LinkedIn post was swift and passionate, with hundreds weighing in. While some supported his decision, most comments expressed ridicule or disbelief.
“What an idiot!” chided one critic. “Are we going to turn in our cars and steak knives too?”
Mann shrugs off the comments bombarding his essay, yet said he harbors no illusions his action will stop another massacre.
“I didn’t know what to do, but I had to do something,” he said. “I had to take a stand.”
