In his ongoing effort to differentiate between himself and Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden is touting background checks but ignoring the fact they do not stop mass public attackers.
On Sunday night Biden tweeted:
While Politifact reports Sanders “did vote against the Brady bill, including a shifting mix of background check provisions, five times,” Biden is not addressing the fact checks have proven to be no hindrance to determined, mass public attackers.
In fact, nearly every mass public attackers of recent memory–going back some 12 or 13 years–acquired his guns via a background check.
Here is a short list of attackers who acquired their guns via background checks:
- El Paso Walmart attacker (August 3, 2019)
- Virginia Beach attacker (May 31, 2019)
- Poway Synagogue attacker (April 27, 2019)
- Tree of Life Synagogue attacker (October 27, 2018)
- Parkland high school attacker (February 14, 2018)
- Texas church attacker (November 5, 2017)
- Las Vegas attacker (October 1, 2017)
- the Alexandria attacker (June 14, 2017))
- Orlando attacker (June 12, 2016)
- the UCLA gunman (June 1, 2016))
- the San Bernardino attackers (December 2, 2015)
- the Colorado Springs attacker (October 31, 2015)
- the Umpqua Community College attacker (October 1, 2015)
- Alison Parker’s attacker (August 26, 2015)
- the Lafayette movie theater attacker (July 23, 2015)
- the Chattanooga attacker (July 16, 2015)
- the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal attacker (Jun 17, 2015)
- the Muhammad Carton Contest attackers (May 3, 2014)
- the Las Vegas cop killers (June 9, 2015)
- the Santa Barbara attacker (May 23, 2014)
- the Fort Hood attacker (April 2, 2014)
- the Arapahoe High School attacker (December 13, 2013)
- the D.C. Navy Yard attacker (September 16, 2013)
- the Aurora movie theater attacker (July 20, 2012)
- Gabby Giffords’ attacker (January 8, 2011)
- the Fort Hood attacker (November 5, 2009)
- the Virginia Tech attacker (April 16, 2007)
The handful of mass public attackers who did not acquire their guns via background checks–attackers like the one who struck Sandy Hook Elementary School—got their guns via thievery, so no amount of point-of-sale gun control would have stopped them. This is important at a time when Democrats in the House and Senate, and the presidential primary race, are all pushing an expansion of background checks as crucial for American safety.
On February 18, 2020, Breitbart News reported a John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study showing that expanded backgrounds do not reduce the mass shooting rate. Thus, whereas Democrats are fond of pushing even more background checks as a way of stopping future attacks, Johns Hopkins study found that expanded background checks are not “associated with lower rates of fatal mass shootings.”
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.