California’s Democratic Lieutenant Gov. Gavin Newsom tweeted about gun control on the fifth anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary school attack — but inadvertently drew attention to the failure of gun laws.
Newsom mentioned one of California’s biggest high-profile gun control failures — the San Bernardino terror attack of December 2015 — and lumped a number of other high-profile attacks in with it.
He tweeted:
The attackers passed a background check in every attack listed by Newsom. The San Bernardino attackers passed background checks for their handguns; the Orlando attacker passed a background check for his rifles and a waiting period for his handgun; the Vegas attacker passed multiple background checks for his rifles; and Texas killer Devin Kelley passed a background check for his rifle.
The post-Sandy Hook gun control push centered on requiring more of the background checks that attackers are already passing with ease. The push was spearheaded by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and went down in flames in April 2013.
But Newsom is still pushing, and attempted to tie California’s gun control failures to the NRA somehow. In reality, gun control’s failures can only be blamed on the mindset that gun control is a solution to begin with.
California has universal background checks, gun registration requirements, gun confiscation laws, a 10-day waiting period for gun purchases, an “assault weapons” ban, and a “good cause” requirement for concealed carry permit issuance, among many other controls.
Yet the San Bernardino attackers were able to shoot 14 to death in a gun-free zone; a man was able to murder a professor and then himself on UCLA’s gun free campus in 2016; Palm Spring police officers were ambushed and killed last October; and an armed attacker shot and killed three innocents in Fresno earlier this year.
The lesson of Sandy Hook Elementary is simple: gun control does not control criminals, it empowers them.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets, 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. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
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