Gabby Giffords recounted the January 8, 2011, attack on her by suggesting Americans want everyone to pass the same background check her attacker passed for his firearm.
On March 4, 2015, Breitbart News reported that Giffords’ attacker, Jared Loughner, passed a background check in order to purchase the handgun he used in the assassination attempt. Nevertheless, Giffords’ and her husband, Mark Kelly, launched a gun control group which pushed for more point-of-sale background checks following the attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Writing in USA Today on Monday, Giffords said, “Public support to strengthen gun laws has soared to record highs. An overwhelming majority of voters — 95% — want Congress to pass legislation that requires background checks for all gun sales.” Again, this would be a requirement that all gun sales go through the very background check that Giffords’ attacker passed.
Moreover, it would be a requirement that all gun sales go through the same background check passed by the Texas church attacker (November 5, 2017), the Las Vegas attacker (October 1, 2017), and each of these attackers and alleged attackers as well:
- the Alexandria attacker (June 14, 2017))
- Orlando attacker (June 12, 2016)
- the UCLA gunman (June 1, 2016))
- the San Bernardino attackers (December 2, 2015)
- 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)
Think about it this way–we have a point-of-sale background check requirement for all retail gun sales. That requirement has been in place since 1998. Gun controllers like Giffords want to expand our current system so as to include private gun sales as well, thus creating a universal background check system. However, the fact that criminals and terrorists are already acquiring their guns via background checks at retail proves that an expansion of the system would do nothing to reduce crime or high profile attacks.
Giffords is not alone in pushing for universal background checks, rather, the left is united in pushing for them. And this leads to a simple question: Since background checks are already demonstrably impotent to stop high profile attacks, what does the left continue pushing to expand 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.