Fact Check: Jimmy Kimmel Posits ‘Background Checks’ as Fix for Mass Shootings

CLAIM: Jimmy Kimmel used his Wednesday night dialogue to claim “commonsense gun controls” like “background checks” are part of the fix for mass shootings.

VERDICT: FALSE. On May 16, 2022, a New York Times column asked, “What Do Most Mass Shooters Have in Common?” The Times then answered its own question by explaining that the common tie among most mass shooters is that “they bought their guns legally.”

Kimmel began his dialogue by referencing the Texas school shooting then segued into a gun control push, saying, “Most Americans support keeping guns out of the hands of criminals and children. The majority of us do, Democrats and Republicans. And the reason they call them ‘commonsense gun laws’ is because that’s what they are, commonsense.”

He then claimed, “Eighty-nine percent of Americans want background checks before a gun can be purchased, which is just the very least we can do.”

Kimmel noted that a “bi-partisan bill passed in the House” and “has been stalled in the Senate for over a year now.” He criticized pro-2A Senators as “cowardly” for not passing the bill.

Kimmel never explained, but the bill he referenced is a universal background check bill; a bill to expand existing background checks so they cover private sales the way retail sales have been covered since the 1990s. (The FBI began doing background checks on retail sales in 1998.)

So America has had background checks on all retail gun sales for nearly 25 years, a point which Kimmel did not mention.

Moreover, later in his dialogue he cited three mass shootings–Buffalo, Parkland, Uvalde–to make the case for gun control, but failed to note that the gunman in each instance acquired their firearms via background checks.

As the New York Times indicated, “Of all the wrenching similarities between the massacres at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the Walmart in El Paso and the Tops supermarket in Buffalo, one stands out most starkly: Each gun used was purchased legally.”

Los Angeles Times legal affairs correspondent Harry Litman observed the legality of the firearm purchase in Uvalde as well:

We already have background checks and people with criminal intent but no criminal record pass them with no problem.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.