A Look at the ‘Commonsense Gun Laws’ That Did Nothing to Stop Would-be Assassin

In the aftermath of the latest attempt on the life of President Donald Trump, the anti-gun left immediately went on the offensive by saying that what’s needed are more gun control laws. Rep. Jamie Raskin, for example, said it was a sign we needed universal background checks. Others offered more nebulous suggestions of “more gun control” without any actual policy recommendations.

But the thing is, the would-be assassin got all of his guns in California. You know, the state that has all of those laws everyone wants at the federal level, and then some.

Over at The Daily Wire, Amy Swearer has a look at all of the “commonsense gun laws” that did jack squat to stop this guy.

President Donald Trump survived yet another serious assassination attempt, this time at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.

Anti-gun advocates have wasted no time framing this as a gun control issue. Again.

It’s a particularly unserious blame shift this time, given that the would-be assassin, Cole Allen, legally purchased his firearms in California and attempted to kill the president in Washington, D.C. — two places awash with the very types of “commonsense” gun laws that advocates demand be imposed on a national scale.

The problem isn’t a lack of gun laws. The problem is that those laws, as we so often see, are incapable of stopping people like Allen from simply ignoring or sidestepping them.

Federal law required Allen to declare his firearms in his checked luggage when transporting them interstate as a passenger on a common or contract carrier, such as Amtrak. California state law separately prohibited Allen from possessing his firearms in a public transit facility unless he complied with the appropriate policies for declaring them in checked baggage. He violated both laws when he failed to declare his firearms and transported them in his carry-on.

Both California and D.C. make it a crime to transport guns outside the home unless certain conditions are met, including that the guns are transported for a lawful purpose and to a place where the person can legally possess them. “Attempting to assassinate the president” is not a lawful purpose. Although Allen may have lawfully owned his guns in California, he lacked valid D.C. firearm registration certifications, which are required to legally possess firearms in the nation’s capital. Moreover, because Allen didn’t have a valid D.C. gun registration certificate, merely possessing ammunition was a crime.

And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg, but Swearer also notes just how many of these gun laws Allen complied with, such as buying all of his firearms lawfully.

See, when you take on the idea that you can create laws to keep them out of the hands of bad actors, you run into a massive problem stemming from the fact that literally no one can predict who will try to do something evil just by talking to them. The very worst among us, people like sociopaths and psychopaths, are pretty adept at pretending to not just be normal, but actually good people. They fake it really, really well. 

Those who aren’t that adept have long found ways to get guns despite the restrictions meant to stop them.

But for someone like Allen, he didn’t need to. He complied with every single rule on the books in California. He didn’t even own something remotely similar to an AR-15, even. Just a pump-action shotgun and a semi-auto handgun with a standard capacity of less than 10 rounds. He did everything an anti-gun state like California expects.

And where did it end up?

Then, the moment he decided to go from law-abiding gun owner to potential assassin, he threw all of that out the window and started breaking laws aplenty. He was already set to be a criminal, so what were a few more crimes compared to killing the president? He knew it and thus didn’t care about the rest.

We keep being told that gun control laws are essential for public safety, but we keep seeing example after example of them not working in some way, shape, or form. How can they be essential when they can’t stop either something major like this, or the more mundane street crime that doesn’t even make the local news in some places?

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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