During the October 9 airing of Tucker Carlson Tonight, law professor Richard Painter suggested police ought to be able to track gun purchases and knock on an individual’s door if that person acquires “too many.”
The professor would not define what “too many” guns would be, only that police should be able to knock on your door based on gun purchases.
I don’t think anybody’s going to come up with a solution that’s going to eliminate all gun violence, but we have a lot of it and this keeps happening. At a minimum, we ought to information on people like Mr. Paddock who are acquiring dozens of weapons over a very shot period of time. It amazes me that the police didn’t know that he was acquiring that many weapons over such a short period of time. That information ought to be available.
Carlson responded, “How many weapons in what period of time should trigger a visit to your house from authorities?”
Painter replied, “I am not an expert on what the threshold ought to be. I think that’s that up to law enforcement.”
Carlson then interrupted to say, “It’s not up to law enforcement. Nothing’s ‘up to law enforcement.’ It’s up to voters to decide what the laws are and then law enforcement, of course, enforces them by definition.”
Carlson then pointed to Painter’s tweets, wherein Painter claimed that Vegas-style attacks could be “solved by laws” and he asked Painter to outline a specific law.
Painter responded,
Law enforcement ought to know if someone has acquired dozens of weapons and they can use that information along with other information–for example, Is the person associating with known terrorists? Is the person associating with the Ku Klux Klan? Is the person someone who appears to be psychologically unsettled? They can use that information–along with other information–to check out the facts. And they do not need a law to go and pay you a visit in your house and say, “Hello, what’s up? What’s going on?”
Carlson summarized, “Ok, so you think that if people buy too many guns the police should go visit them and ask why they have the guns and do what?”
Painter suggested the answer the Carlson’s question is in flux. He said, “That depends.” Painter the said “they might or might not have figured out this guy was a lunatic or the guy who shot up the gay bar.”
The mention of the “gay bar”–i.e., Orlando Pulse–demonstrates the danger of the kind of gun control Painter is pushing. The Orlando Pulse gunman had two guns; he had purchased two guns. Within the constrictions of a seven-minute interview on Tucker Carlson Tonight Painter went from police knocking on the door of people who bought dozens of guns to knocking on the door of people who bought two.
Gun control is a slippery slope.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com