TN Dem Sets Up Stand to Prove It’s Easy to Sell a Gun, No One Buys Gun

On April 5, Tennessee Democrats tweeted a video of House Democratic Caucus leader Mike Stewart (D-52) trying to prove how easy it is to sell a gun by offering an AK-47 for sale at a lemonade stand. The video ran just over 48 mins and no one bought the gun.

The video opens with Stewart sitting behind the stand with the gun lying by pitchers of lemonade and packages of cookies. He says he bought the gun from a private seller, and universal background checks are needed so that “terrorists, people on the terrorist watch list, and felons” cannot privately purchase “a military-quality weapon.”

He offers the gun for sale for $700 but says he will take $100 off the price if a would-be buyer agrees to undergo a background check first. Stewart then sits for a little over 48 minutes so the cameras can catch the ah-ha moment: the private sale of a gun at a lemonade stand.

It never happens. Moreover, WKRN reports that no one bought his lemonade or cookies either.

A few points need to be made. First, when Stewart suggests that the passage of yet another law will prevent felons from acquiring guns, he is suggesting universal background checks can do what all other gun laws have failed to do — that they can curtail the criminal drive of felons who are willing to break laws to obtain firearms. In so doing, he ignores the fact that felons already face a 100 percent ban on gun possession.

Secondly, when Stewart suggests universal background checks will keep terrorists from acquiring guns, he ignores the fact that France has universal background checks, yet the terrorists who attacked Charlie Hebdo headquarters and killed 12 innocents on January 7, 2015, were heavily armed. And on November 13, 2015, universal background checks did not prevent terrorists from gunning down 130 innocents in cold blood during a concert in Paris.

Lastly, Stewart suggests universal background checks will keep “people on the terror watch list” from getting guns. Democrats who make this argument ignore the fact that the June 12, 2016, terror attack at Orlando Pulse was carried out by someone who was not on the terror watch list. And the attackers who killed 14 co-workers in San Bernardino on December 2, 2015, were not on the list either.

So what happens when you pass a new law to include the watch list, yet latent terrorists (i.e., would-be terrorists with no criminal or mental health record) legally acquire guns and use those guns on innocents? What new laws will Stewart want to place on the backs of law-abiding citizens then?

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.