A tragic shooting spree took place in the Midland-Odessa area of West Texas on Saturday that left seven people dead and at least 20 others wounded. As if on cue, even before any of the pertinent details were known about the shooter or his weapon, the left immediately began its predicable demands for stricter gun control laws.
President Donald Trump was confronted by the media on those calls to action this weekend, and while he admitted to being open to discussion about potential solutions to reduce instances of gun violence, he made it clear that the shooting in Texas “really hasn’t changed anything” in terms of the broader debate over enacting enacting new restrictions while also protecting citizens’ rights.
Gun debate unchanged
Trump briefly stopped to speak with reporters at the White House upon his return from Camp David on Sunday, but while the president may have wanted to focus mostly on the approaching impact of Hurricane Dorian on the southeast coastal states, the media mostly asked about gun control.
The president noted that he had been speaking with a variety of lawmakers, both Republican and Democrat, in both the House and Senate about their various proposals and that he was open to seeing what might be put forward, though he offered no guarantees on whether he would support anything in particular.
“This really hasn’t changed anything,” Trump said with regard to Saturday’s shooting spree. “We’re doing a package, and we’ll see what it all — how it comes about. It’s coming about right now. And a lot of people are talking about it. And that’s irrespective of what happened yesterday in Texas.”
Asked if he had spoken with House Democrats, presumably about their universal background check bill that has been stalled in the Senate, Trump replied, “Well, we’re looking at a lot of different things. We’re looking at a lot of different bills, ideas, concepts. It’s been going on for a long while. Background checks.”
“I will say that, for the most part, sadly, if you look at the last four or five — going back, even five or six or seven years, for the most part, as strong as you make your background checks, they would not have stopped any of it,” he added. “So it’s a big problem. It’s a mental problem. It’s a big problem.”
Shooter failed background check
Democrats and gun control advocates don’t want to hear it, but there is a fundamental truth to what Trump said about background checks, in that no matter how much background checks are expanded or strengthened, sick people with sick intentions will still get their hands on a weapon and commit atrocities.
To wit, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott revealed on Monday that the Midland-Odessa shooter had somehow obtained the firearm used in the shooting spree despite having a criminal record and previously failing to pass a background check for an attempted weapons purchase.
“Not only did the Odessa gunman have a criminal history…he also previously failed a gun purchase background check in Texas…& he didn’t go thru a background check for the gun he used in Odessa. We must keep guns out of criminals’ hands,” Abbott tweeted.
Futile “solution”
Universal background checks, as proposed by Democrats and even a few Republicans, would most likely have not stopped this criminal — who was already prohibited from possessing weapons and had already failed a background check — from illegally acquiring the weapon he used through illicit means.
Infringing upon the rights of the law-abiding in the hope of catching law-breakers with regulations that they will similarly ignore is the height of stupidity and amounts to useless virtue signaling, which really just makes it par for the course for today’s Democrat Party. Hopefully, President Trump realizes the futility of such a meaningless “solution” and rejects the left’s efforts to impose their unconstitutional restrictions upon the good people of this country.