Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) claims universal background checks are more popular than “baseball, kittens, and apple pie.”
He made this statement via Twitter on Wednesday, as a lead-up to a gun control event which Democrats intend to use to pressure Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) into bringing up universal background checks for a vote.
On Thursday he joined a Democrat gun-control rally in Washington, DC, in support of universal background checks. The rally featured other go-to gun controllers such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA), as well as Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).
Sen. Murphy claimed 11,400 people have died from gunshot wounds since the House passage of universal background checks on February 27. He did not provide any substantiation for this claim, but seemed to jump off gun-control claims that 100 people die each day from gun violence. Gun controllers frequently make that claim without explaining that roughly 66 percent of all gun deaths in the U.S. are suicides, rather than gun violence. Hillary Clinton took this approach during her unsuccessful run for president and Kamala Harris is doing it now.
Murphy also failed to explain what percentage of gun crime involved a background check. In other words, in how many cases of criminal use did the perpetrator acquire his gun legally? This is a necessary question because history has proven mass shooters almost always acquire their guns via background checks, including the May 31, Virginia Beach attacker.
Other mass shooters who acquired their guns via background checks include the Virginia Tech gunman (April 16, 2007), the Fort Hood gunman (November 5, 2009), the Aurora movie theater gunman (July 20, 2012), the D.C. Navy Yard gunman (September 16, 2013), the Fort Hood attacker (April 2, 2014), the Orlando Pulse gunman (June 12, 2016), the Las Vegas gunman (October 1, 2017), the Texas church gunman (November 5, 2017), the Parkland high school gunman (February 14, 2018), and many more.
Gabby Giffords was at the rally. She said, “Now is the time to come together. Be responsible. Democrats, Republicans, everyone. We must never stop fighting. Fight, fight, fight.”
Ironically, Giffords was shot on January 8, 2011, by yet another mass public attacker who acquired his gun via a background check at retail. So expanding background checks to include private sales would have done nothing to prevent the attack on Giffords.
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.