Two things are certain following the Virginia Beach shooting last week: Gun free zones are deadly and Democrats rather use the loss of lives to push for more gun control than pass meaningful laws.
Last week a disgruntled employee walked into his workplace and killed 12 people. Before those victims could be laid to rest, the mainstream media couldn’t wait to find politicians ready to call for even more gun laws.
These all failed to mention the fact the man disregarded a gun control law to commit his deranged act – he was carrying a gun in an area the city had made it illegal to do so.
Socialist Bernie Sanders’ comments were typical. Not long after the shooting, he railed against the gun lobby for “controlling Congress” and the predictably called for more “gun safety legislation.”
Virginia Democrat Governor Ralph Northam was ready with a call for specific gun regulations. Five days after the shooting Northam called for a special session of Virginia’s General Assembly to consider a package of gun control bills.
Now U.S Representative Jennifer Wexton who formerly represented Loudoun County in the state Senate tweeted, “Shame on everyone in the General Assembly who voted against” [a bill banning high-capacity magazines.] Elections are coming in November, and we need to make sure we flip the House and Senate.”
Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr. (James City) responded angrily to such political opportunism. Norment told the Washington Post that Wexton’s comment was “offensive, disrespectful, and tasteless … [to] use a tragedy like this to promote a political agenda.”
House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert (R-Shenandoah) called for a more responsible reaction to the tragedy when he wrote via email, “We are going to allow the law enforcement investigation to play out before drawing any major conclusions, but the Virginia Beach Police Chief was very clear that there are no gun control laws that would have stopped this. There’s a lot more to learn and it’s disappointing to see those jumping immediately to politics.”
Virginia Beach Police Chief James Carvera inadvertently made Second Amendment and gun rights advocates point for them when he admitted gun control would have done nothing to prevent the death of 12 of his fellow citizens.
The reason such laws would not have prevented this shooting is that the laws pushed by Democrats are a dismal failure. Some of those include:
Universal Background Checks, which have been found to be totally ineffective. The fact is that 95 percent of initial denials prove to be false positives. Meanwhile, law-abiding citizens are denied guns while the real criminals don’t bother with legally purchased weapons 96 percent of the time.
Gun-free zones are also a failure. The premise that Americans are safer when guns are banned in certain public areas is just wrong. The Virginia Beach shooting proved that. Earlier this week, the husband of one of the shooting victims said his wife wanted to bring her gun to work over concerns about her colleague. They talked about it as late as the night before she died. She planned to hide the gun in her handbag, but ultimately decided against doing so over laws banning guns in her workplace. She died following gun free zone rules, while the shooter violated them.
The Crime Prevention Research Center has documented proof that 98 percent of the mass shootings in the U.S. occurred in gun free zones.
Focusing on a ban on AR-15 style firearms misses the point. The killer in Virginia Beach used two handguns. It is handguns, not AR-15s, that are used by the great majority of mass shooters.
Suppressors don’t make it easier to kill. Typical anti-gun zealots, politicians, and the media were quick to call for laws against what they call “silencers.” Gun owners and law enforcement know that suppressors work like a car muffler to protect people’s hearing.
The shooter used a suppressor, but many witnesses reported they “heard gunshots.”
The United States IS NOT the leader in mass shootings. No matter what Sanders and other gun control advocates say, the truth is the U.S. is near the bottom of developed countries when it comes to mass shootings (64th of 97)
The Daily Caller reports that the 63 nations above the U.S. on that list have stricter gun control than the United States. That means gun control is a huge failure around the globe as well as here.
While the complete facts are not in yet about the shooter in Virginia Beach, there is one fact too many gun control advocates ignore. Virtually every mass shooter in recent memory passed a background check.
One thing we do know about this most recent shooter is that he was no different. When he purchased the firearms used in the shootings, he passed a background check.
