Bill O’Reilly: It’s Too Easy to Get ‘High-Powered Weaponry’ in America

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AWR Hawkins

During the June 14 airing of Fox News’s O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly reacted to the Orlando terror attack by saying “high-powered weaponry is too easy to get” in America.

His statements came just hours after Fox News’s Gretchen Carlson called for a ban on AR-15s.

Fox News tweeted O’Reilly’s talking points, in which he said, “There is too much gun crime in the USA, & high-powered weaponry is too easy to get.”

It should be noted that alleged Orlando gunman Omar Mateen passed a background check for his handgun and his AR-15. Moreover, he had to go through a waiting period — minimal of three days — before picking up the handgun after passing the background check. On top of these things, Mateen has a Florida Security Officer license and a Statewide Firearms License. He had to submit to background checks for both licenses and that was prior to the background checks for the guns.

What was “too easy” about this?

Sadly, these are not O’Reilly’s first pro-gun control statements. On January 5, Breitbart News reported his praise for Obama’s executive expansion of background checks — an expansion that circumvented Congress to implement background checks for more private gun sales.

At that time, O’Reilly said, “The FBI should background check anyone buying a firearm in America. That just makes sense.” What he did not say is almost every mass public attacker over the last 10 years passed a background check to acquire their guns.

The list of attackers and alleged attackers who passed background checks for their firearms includes:

Omar Mateen (Orlando), Mainak Sarkar (UCLA), Sayed Farook and Tashfeen Malik (San Bernardino), Noah Harpman (Colorado Springs), Chris Harper Mercer (Umpqua Community College), Vester Lee Flangan (Virgina), John Russell Houser  (Lafayette), Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez (Chattanooga), Dylann Roof (Charleston), Elton Simpson and Nadir Soofi (Garland), Jared and Amanda Miller (Las Vegas), Elliot Rodger (Santa Barabara), Ivan Lopez (Fort Hood 2014), Darion Marcus Aguilar (Maryland mall), Karl Halverson Pierson (Arapahoe High School), Paul Ciancia (LAX), Andrew John Engeldinger (Minneapolis), Aaron Alexis (DC Navy Yard), Tennis Melvin Maynard (West Virginia), Wade Michael Page (Sikh Temple), James Holmes (Aurora theater), Jared Loughner (Tucson), Nidal Hasan (Fort Hood 2009), Jiverly Wong (Binghamton), Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech), Naveed Haq (Seattle), and Mark Barton (Atlanta).

The lesson? Gun control does not work. It does not prevent evil men (and women) from obtaining the weapons they acquire and use to wreak havoc. But it does make it harder for law-abiding citizens to get the guns they need to defend themselves in the event that an evil person opens fire.

You want proof of this? Just look at Chicago. “Assault weapons” — i.e., “high powered weaponry” — is banned in that city, yet nearly 500 people were killed in there last year.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.

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