Shocker: the media have discovered that law-abiding people can exercise their Second Amendment rights in states that do not infringe those rights. Both The Huffington Post and CBS News for some reason felt it newsworthy to send journalists to gun shops to see how easily they could purchase a rifle and ammunition. According to CBS News today:
CBS News sent a producer into a gun store in Alexandria, just outside of Washington D.C. Per Virginia law, she provided two items to prove state residency – a drivers license and voter ID card – as well as her passport to prove U.S. citizenship. She filled out some federal and state forms requiring her name, date of birth, social security number and a few basic questions about any past criminal activity or current restraining orders. And she passed a brief electronic background check. All told, it took 38 minutes and $1,030 for her to walk out of the store legally armed with a rifle, 100 rounds of ammunition and a 30-round magazine.
CBS then quoted a leftist law professor, Adam Winkler, from UCLA stating that “you could go into a gun store and buy an AR-15, just like you’d go into a Starbucks and buy a cup of coffee.” Except that you can buy a cup of coffee without a background check, it doesn’t take 38 minutes, and we don’t need any personal information about you. But other than that, right on the money, Prof!
The Huffington Post was similarly shocked to learn that – amazingly! – it took them the same amount of time to buy a gun in Orlando, Florida:
It took us 38 minutes to walk out of a gun shop with a death machine.
Just two days after Omar Mateen used a semi-automatic rifle to murder 49 innocent people and injure dozens more, we were able to purchase an AR-15 — a rifle similar to Mateen’s that has been used in several other mass shootings on American soil — in less time than it takes to buy a cart full of groceries.
Here’s a more relevant question: how long would it take for the CBS News producer and the journalists at The Huffington Post to walk into a gay bar and murder 49 people? The answer: it would take eternity, because they are not radical Muslim terrorists.
And that’s the point. Law-abiding Americans have a right to defend themselves. Would the country be safer if CBS News producers couldn’t get guns, but determined terrorists found a way to obtain them? The implication here seems to be that if it were more difficult for everyone to buy an AR-15, we’d all be safer. But law-abiding citizens are willing to jump through fewer hoops to get weapons than lawbreakers intent on doing harm.
Nonetheless, the left continues to foster the notion that ease of weapons sale is the serious problem here – even though the FBI had Omar Mateen on its watchlist and removed him two years before he murdered Americans in Orlando.
This is myopic stupidity at its finest. Instead of focusing on the true culprit, the media suggests that we’re all to blame – if we want to buy AR-15s, we’re part of the “climate of violence,” or some such nincompoopery. In reality, the government’s job is to protect us without violating our rights. If they can’t do that, we’d better be ready to protect both ourselves and our rights, at point of gun if necessary.