In the wake of the Sunday shootout between outlaw biker gangs in Waco, Texas, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America is stressing that outlaw biker gangs would not have guns if legislators expanded background checks.
According to The Hill, Moms Demand Action’s Texas leader, Angela Turner, said, “There is no single solution to ending gun violence, but we do know that background checks on all gun sales save lives and keep guns out of the wrong hands.”
Turner also said the shootout ought to be a wakeup call regarding open carry, although she did not explain how a shootout between outlaw bikers is in any way related to law-abiding citizens openly carrying firearms.
Moms Demand founder Shannon Watts voiced her support for expanding background checks via Twitter.
At 5:43 a.m. Monday morning she wrote: “Dear Texas lawmakers: more guns in more places with fewer safeguards [is] not [a] winning strategy for public safety.” Hours later, at 9:03 a.m., she sent another tweet saying the outlaw biker shootout “should be wake up call for Texas legislators: stop taking orders from gun lobby; listen to police and constituents.”
In other words, Moms Demand Action’s reaction to a shootout between outlaw biker gangs is that more gun control should be heaved upon the backs of law-abiding citizens, particularly by expanding the frequency of background checks.
Neither Turner nor Watts addressed the utter failure of background checks to stop high profile attacks.
For example, 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), Tennis Melvin Maynard (West Virginia), James Holmes (Aurora theater), Jared Loughner (Tucson), Nidal Hasan (Fort Hood 2009), Jiverly Wong (Binghamton), Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech), and Naveed Haq (Seattle), all passed background checks to acquire the guns they used in their attacks, yet Watts and Turner are silent about it.
Why the silence? It is because expanded background checks, while ineffective, are an important step for Moms Demand Action and individuals like Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly, because they open the door to gun control by incrementalism.
In other words, once background checks fail to stop high-profile gun crime, the door is open to pursue even more gun stringent controls.
We just saw this in Oregon.
Oregon legislators passed background checks for gun shows in 2000, but the checks did not end the crimes that “closing the gun show loophole” was supposed to end. So Democratic legislators expanded the checks even further this year, now covering private gun sales in the state as well. And when this expansion fails to stop criminals from acting on their criminality anti-gun lawmakers will find newer and more stringent gun control laws that need to be passed, and Moms Demand Action will be right there to support it.
One thing does not change, and that is this — gun control only checks the behavior of law-abiding citizens. It controls such citizens while giving criminals the advantage of being heavily armed.
Want proof? Think about this — it was against the law to shoot at police officers on May 18. Law-abiding citizens complied with the law, but members of the outlaw biker gangs shot at officers in Waco anyway. Shannon Watts and Angela Turner ignored the behavior of the law-abiding citizens, choosing instead to seize upon the criminal actions of the gang members and urge legislators to pass new laws for law-abiding citizens.
It’s the world upside down.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.