During the September 26 presidential debate Hillary Clinton said America has a “gun epidemic” and called for background checks to fix it.
She also called for adding the terror watch list to background checks in hopes of keeping guns out of the hands of terrorists.
Three observations: First, regarding background checks, Clinton did not mention that we already have them and almost every mass public attacker–and alleged attacker–of recent memory passed one to acquire their weapons. Those include:
- the UCLA gunman (June 1)
- the Colorado Springs attacker (October 31, 2015)
- the Umpqua Community College attacker (October 1, 2015)
- Alison Parker’s attacker (August 26, 2015)
- the Lafayette movie theater attacker (July 23, 2015)
- the Chattanooga attacker (July 16, 2015)
- the alleged Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal attacker (Jun 17, 2015)
- the Muhammad Carton Contest attackers (May 3, 2014)
- the Las Vegas cop killers (June 9, 2015)
- the Santa Barbara attacker (May 23, 2014)
- the Fort Hood attacker (April 2, 2014)
- the Arapahoe High School attacker (December 13, 2013)
- the D.C. Navy Yard attacker (September 16, 2013)
- the Aurora movie theater attacker (July 20, 2012)
- Gabby Giffords’ attacker (January 8, 2011)
- the Fort Hood attacker (November 5, 2009)
- the Virginia Tech attacker (April 16, 2007), and many others.
Secondly, regarding adding the no-fly list to background checks, Clinton failed to mention that our three most recent terror attackers–the NY bombing suspect, the Orlando terrorist, and San Bernardino terrorists–acquired their guns via background checks and none of them were on a terror watch list, so adding the watch list to checks would have done nothing.
Lastly, Clinton has been pushing a “gun epidemic” for some time. In November 2015, Breitbart News reported that Clinton swelled the number of gun violence deaths by 66 percent. She did this by adding suicides and accidental gun deaths to homicides. This allows her to take the approximate 11,000 actual homicides that occur annually and expand them to 33,000 deaths by lumping in the approximately 22,000 suicides and 500 accidental deaths that occur each year.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com