Giffords Tries to Leverage Minnesota Assassinations to Push Narrative

I get that most gun folks have a different worldview than anti-gun people. It almost has to be this way because if they viewed the world as we did, they wouldn’t be able to be gun control advocates and still pretend they care about life, freedom, or anything else.

Sure, some are cynically pretending to care about all of that when they only care about power, but a lot of their fellow travelers aren’t ever going to have any power and know it. 

And that brings me to what happened over the weekend in Minnesota.

It’s a terrible situation and one that should never have happened, to be sure. Killing people isn’t the way to address political issues, especially when we have functional elections.

But for Giffords, it was an opportunity to try and raise a stink.

Americans are scared knowing that virtually anyone—from violent extremists to drug traffickers—can easily assemble a stockpile of AK-47s and use them to target and kill people.

The industry wants to make money by selling guns to anyone. It’s leaders’ jobs to stop them. https://t.co/jzCRsyC9qX

— GIFFORDS (@GIFFORDS_org) June 16, 2025

Unsurprisingly, they restricted replies to only people mentioned.

Since no one was mentioned, no one can reply, which is a shame, because this level of stupidity cries out to be addressed. Which they probably knew, and that’s why they limited replies like they did.

First, the quoted post claims the alleged killer had three AK-47-style rifles. This is the “stockpile” that has Giffords soiling their britches over. Three guns.

The thing is, though, guess how many someone can shoot effectively at one time? That’s right, just one.

Having multiple rifles might come in handy if you suck at reloading–or you just don’t want to–but even if someone is just limited to one rifle, they can still do a lot of damage if they’re criminally minded. 

On the same token, though, we started this year off not with a shooting, but a vehicle-based terrorist attack in New Orleans. Removing guns from the equation doesn’t stop bad actors from doing bad things.

It just reduces people’s ability to fight back.

Next, let’s talk about this idea that the firearm industry wants to arm literally everyone without any concerns about who is buying, because that’s BS.

The firearm industry follows all federal laws. The NSSF, which represents the industry, has programs designed to prevent criminals from obtaining firearms via gun stores. The Don’t Buy for the Other Guy program seeks to reduce straw purchases, for example. 

No one wants to arm people who are ineligible to purchase a firearm lawfully, since as drug traffickers.

The problem here is that Giffords fails to explain how you differentiate between these dangerous people are regular folks. If they’ve been convicted, of course, it’s pretty easy. As it stands, no felon can lawfully purchase a firearm, and the NSSF isn’t doing anything to really change that. Many of us don’t want non-violent felons to stay ineligible, but the support for violent felons to get their gun rights back easily isn’t there.

So what do they actually want to do?

The answer is simple. They want to keep any of us from buying guns at all. That’s the only way to keep “violent extremists” like the alleged assassin from getting firearms. After all, he doesn’t seem to have any felony or domestic violence convictions in his background. There’s no reason at all he would be barred from getting a gun.

And it’s kind of disgusting to pretend that there’s some way to have kept him from having firearms that doesn’t keep the rest of us disarmed as well.

Then again, it’s Giffords. They’re not known for their mental prowess.