On May 14 Everytown for Gun Safety president John Feinblatt pushed a list of 13 cop killers as justification for more gun control via the expansion of background checks. What Feinblatt did not say is that one of the 13 passed a background check to get his gun and another was a Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL)–the very person who facilitates background checks on others.
HuffPo quoted Feinblatt as saying, “Police officers are on the front lines protecting our communities each and every day — we owe it to them to close the loopholes that make it easy for criminals to dodge background checks and easily get their hands on guns.”
Yet the Daily Mail reported that Tennis Melvin Maynard–one of Everytown’s 13–passed a background check to get the gun he used to shoot and kill West Virginia Sheriff Walter E. Crum. Maynard acquired the gun from an FFL in 2010 then killed Crum in April 2013.
Maynard was not supposed to pass a background check. CNN explained:
In West Virginia, once a mental hygiene commissioner adjudicates someone with mental health problems at a hearing, the state’s mental health registry is notified and the information is transferred to the National Instant Check System. In Maynard’s case, it didn’t happen as soon as it should have.
This means Maynard can be listed along with Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi (Garland), Jared and Amanda Miller (Las Vegas), Elliot Rodger (Santa Barabara), Ivan Lopez (Fort Hood 2014), Darion Marcus Aguilar (Maryland mall), Karl Halverson Pierson (Arapahoe High School), Paul Ciancia (LAX), Aaron Alexis (DC Navy Yard), James Holmes (Aurora theater), Jared Loughner (Tucson), Nidal Hasan (Fort Hood 2009), Jiverly Wong (Binghamton), Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech), and Naveed Haq (Seattle), as another high profile attacker who got his gun via a background check.
In addition to Maynard, Police One shows that Ricky Don McCommas–another of Everytown’s 13 cop killers–was actually “a licensed gun dealer.” He was an FFL who used an .223 rifle to kill Sgt. Lance McLean in Granbury, Texas, on July 1.
Instead of pointing out how Maynard and McCommas serve as two more proofs that background checks do not stop latent criminals, Everytown for Gun Safety lumped Maynard and McCommas in with gun thieves, gang members, and terrorists to argue for more background checks.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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