Democrats overlooked the gun control failures leading up to the March 15, 2019, New Zealand mosque attacks, choosing instead to push bans and confiscations as the next step of an incremental gun control push.

Think about it–one of the Democrats’ biggest gun control projects is to secure universal background checks in the U.S. They tell us this will make us safe by keeping guns out of the wrong hands and use gun crime victims, like Gabby Giffords, to silence criticism of the push.

Democrats are so eager to secure universal background checks they even pursue them in the wake of crimes where the gunman acquired his gun via background checks.

For example, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) pushed for universal background checks one week after the October 1, 2017, Las Vegas attack. Murphy went so far as to refer to such checks as the “North Star” of Democrat-sought gun control. And he did this even though it was known within 24 hours of the attack that the gunman had acquired firearms via a background check.

Enter New Zealand, a nation with some of the most in-depth background checks in the world. The University of Sydney’s GunPolicy.org describes New Zealand’s gun control as “restrictive,” because New Zealanders who wish to own a gun must first acquire a license for gun ownership. The acquisition of that license involves passage of a background check that “considers criminal, mental health, medical, addiction and domestic violence records.” Third party references must also be provided to authorities during the license procurement process and interviews are conducted with the applicant’s immediate family.

Licensing and background checks? That is a dream come true for Democrats, but with one little caveat–it did not work. The attacker who killed 50 people on March 15 simply complied with the gun controls, bought his guns legally, then used them for heinous purposes, just like the Las Vegas attacker.

But Democrats do not admit this blatant failure. Instead they push on to the next step in their incremental gun control push. And the next step in this case is confiscatory in nature.

On April 4, 2019, Breitbart News quoted Rep. Eric Swalwell tweeting, “We recently passed background checks bill in the House. We need to ban and buyback assault weapons next.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News 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.