In the wake of the Charleston shooting Thursday, and before the bodies were cold, those with a pre disposed anti-Second Amendment agenda disgustingly jumped on the tragic situation to advocate for increased gun control.
The argument particularly made little sense in this case given that reports quoting law enforcement suggested that suspected killer Dylann Storm Roof was given the gun used in the shooting spree by his father as a gift, when Roof was ineligible to own a firearm due to drug related crimes.
The story then evolved into Dylann STOLE the gun, a Glock, from his parents.
In either case, laws were flouted, and further restricting the rights of law abiding Americans would have done NOTHING to prevent this from happening.
CNN reports today, however, that in actual fact, the shooter BOUGHT the gun he used himself:
He himself bought the .45-caliber handgun used in the shooting last April at a Charleston gun store, according to the two officials. Earlier, a senior law enforcement official had indicated that [his] father bought him a Glock firearm for his birthday.
[…]
His grandfather says that Roof was given “birthday money” and that the family didn’t know what Roof did with it.
If this information is accurate, it means that Roof passed a background check in a gun store, a check that gun control advocates want to see applied to ALL transactions, public and private.
This begs the question then, if background checks on all firearm transactions are the one stop solution to gun crime, then how did Roof, a known felon, pass the background check that we are told over and over again is the key to reducing gun violence?
Indeed, it is the case that the majority of other mass shooters in recent years managed to buy the firearms they used legally after passing background checks.
The shooters at Virginia Tech, the Aurora Colorado movie theater, Fort Hood, Isla Vista, the Washington Navy Yard, the attempted mass killing at Arapahoe High School ALL passed background checks.
The shooter at Washington Navy Yard even managed to buy his firearm after the background check system was supposedly strengthened following the incident at Virgina Tech.
The fact is that criminals break the laws, and it seems the laws don’t work anyway. Further infringing on the rights of those who abide by the laws will not change either of these situations.
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Steve Watson is a London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.
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