One Reason Why Anti-Gun Voices Are Slow to Punish Criminals

One of the more infuriating parts about the Old Dominion University shooting was finding out that the killer got his gun from someone who’d been arrested for violating gun control laws previously, but no one seemed all that interested in prosecuting him for the crime. They were, however, very interested in twisting what happened in Norfolk, Virginia, that day to make anti-gun talking points.

And some of them are real doozies, too.

But the problem is that we’ve seen a lot of similar cases over the years, too. That’s especially true over the last few years, where people with dozens of felony arrests are walking around the streets, often on bail from some previous crime, and then they murder some poor, innocent soul.

Despite that, they then call for gun control, as if someone being brutally stabbed to death on a city bus is irrelevant.

Over at The Federalist, though, writer Nathanael Blake has some thoughts on what is really going on there.

While at a gun store recently, I was inundated with warnings against illegally buying a gun for someone else. The counter even had signs threatening up to 15 years in prison. 

They don’t mean it. This was proven a few days beforehand, when a convicted ISIS terrorist opened fire at Old Dominion University, killing an ROTC instructor before the cadets heroically took him out. Not only had this terrorist been set free in the United States after only a brief prison term, but he had bought a stolen gun from a man whom the Biden administration had declined to charge for allegedly repeatedly and illegally buying guns for other people; instead, they had him write an apology letter. So much for 15 years.

…

This was demonstrated by the far-left local prosecutor’s response to the terrorist attack at Old Dominion. He insisted, “If you’re looking for someone to blame … look at our lawmakers who don’t have the courage to implement sensible gun-control measures.” This would be too on-the-nose for satire, but it is a real example of how leftists use gun control as a scapegoat for their failures to administer justice and protect public order.

These failures happen because the left believes law and order are oppressive — well, really, that God, family, country, and practically everything is oppressive. And so they disdain enforcing laws, except against their political and cultural opponents, whom they want to harass and harm. They don’t want to put terrorists or thugs in prison or to deport illegal aliens who molest children, but they’d love an excuse to put you away on a gun law technicality.

Is that the case? I’m leaning toward a maybe here. There are some assumptions that, while I’m not sure are wrong, I can’t say are completely correct, either.

It seems to me that one of the big issues is that when these prosecutors refuse to do their job, then scream about gun control when something horrible happens, it’s not an accident or even a double standard. I can’t help but see the refusal to actually deal with criminals as a way to justify gun control.

We know that the vast majority of a community’s violent crimes are committed by a relatively tiny portion of the population, one that has generally dealt with the police and prosecutors many times before.

The headline of the above-linked piece argues that Democrats can use both the violent criminals on the street and gun control to punish us, but there’s a strong probability that the violent criminals are simply being trusted to be true to their nature, commit violent acts aplenty, which then will prompt the calls for gun control.

None of these bad actors care. They don’t care because they’re not getting guns through lawful channels in the first place. It doesn’t impact them.

They’ll keep on doing what they’re doing until they’re finally stopped, and I can’t help but feel like that’ll only be when guns are essentially banned or when various individuals finally cross a line that anti-gun prosecutors can’t ignore anymore.

The thing is, though, I can’t say that I’m right and Blake is wrong.

My stupidly optimistic nature would love to say that he is, but those days have long since set sail.

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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