Democrat presidential candidate Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke pointed to the May 18, 2018, Santa Fe High School shooting as justification for an “assault weapons” ban.
The Santa Fe High School shooting was carried out with a shotgun and a revolver.
During the June 26, 2019, Democrat presidential debate, O’Rourke talked of his exchanges with students who were in the Santa Fe shooting and said, “They talked about universal background checks, … we know that they saved lives, and they talked about ending the sale of ‘assault weapons’ into our communities.”
The gunman in the Santa Fe shooting was 17-years-old, which means he was too young to buy a gun. Therefore, universal background checks would have had no impact.
Secondly, he used a shotgun and a revolver, which means an “assault weapons” ban would have had no impact.
The Santa Fe attacker used firearms that belonged to someone else. This means no gun control would have prevented the attack he carried out.
O’Rourke’s statement that universal background checks save lives also deserves scrutiny because nearly every mass shooter of the last decade passed a background check for his guns. The exceptions are those who stole their guns.
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.