Yesterday’s shooting at the Navy Yard in Washington, D.C. was a tragedy. It was an incident of a mentally ill person who had anger issues who went berserk. So what happens next? Democrats in Washington start calling for gun control. Somehow they seem to have forgotten that this shooting occurred in Washington, D. C., a gun-free zone, inside the Navy Yard, also a gun-free zone. The problem was not the laws–the problem was that the laws were broken. Based on the background of the killer released by the press, this man should never had been allowed to own a gun. Two stories illustrate the fact that politicians are overlooking the fact that these murders happened in a gun-free zone.
Politico posted an article yesterday quoting Senator Dianne Feinstein:
She (Dianne Feinstein) added: “Congress must stop shirking its responsibility and resume a thoughtful debate on gun violence in this country. We must do more to stop this endless loss of life.”
Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have spoken about trying to revive the background checks measure from Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), but that effort has yet to come to fruition.
Feinstein was the first prominent politician to draw a bright line from the shooting to the congressional gun debate on Monday, though Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) also made a less direct reference to the subject that afternoon.
CBS DC reported:
In the wake of the shooting at the Navy Yard, Obama spokesman Jay Carney said the president is implementing executive actions and reiterated his commitment to strengthening gun laws, including expanding background checks to sales online and at gun shows.
“The president supports, as do an overwhelming majority of Americans, common-sense measures to reduce gun violence,” Carney said.
Even as it was unfolding, the Washington shooting was reigniting talk about guns. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a leading advocate of gun control legislation, mourned “the litany of massacres” the country has suffered in the form of mass shootings.
There is no point in talking about changing the gun laws until we know how this killer obtained his weapons. A background check should have prevented him from obtaining guns, but the fact remains that these killings took place in a gun-free zone. If he ignored the gun-free zone, do we really believe that the killer would have had a problem obtaining the guns illegally?
