President Trump says that expanded background checks would not have prevented recent mass shootings.

President Donald Trump.

President Donald Trump says that expanded background checks would not have prevented recent mass shootings. Reuters. Trump said at a White House presser that "for the most part, as strong as you make your background checks, they would not have stopped any of it." The President said that things like imposing harsher penalties on gun crimes and expanding mental health services might reduce mass shootings. 

My Comment:

Good news from the White House. President Trump has come under fierce criticism from his base for not being as strong on gun rights as we would like. He made some comments in the past about possibly supporting gun laws but that appears to have not stuck. 

And I completely agree, none of these mass shootings would have been prevented by expanded background checks. The only one I can think of that might have been stopped by a background check was the Sutherland Springs shooting in Texas, which was stopped by a good guy with an AR-15. In that case, the attacker had passed his background check but should have failed due to the military not inputting data into the NICS system. That problem was solved by the 'fix NICS" legislation, one of the rare cases of a gun control law I supported as it did nothing to harm gun owners but did make background checks more effective. 

However, even if the Sutherland Springs shooter hadn't been able to purchase a firearm, I doubt it would have stopped the attack. He could have very easily stolen a gun or used a straw buyer to avoid the background checks. Or he could have used any of the other dozens of ways to kill large numbers of people besides guns.

Furthermore, it really doesn't seem that any of these mass shooters are getting their weapons from private sales. The vast majority of them either steal them or pass a background check. The problem is that very few of these mass shooters have a criminal record or are mentally ill enough that they have lost their rights to own firearms. You could have a background check on every firearms sale in the country, but doing so would be pointless if someone with no criminal record or severe mental illness (ie being involuntarily committed) wants to use a gun to kill people.

I haven't written about the most recent mass shooting in Odessa Texas yet and I don't plan to. I've said for awhile that I think a major reason why these attacks keep happening is the intense media coverage of them. From what it sounds like the guy in this attack went postal after getting fired from his job and the attack was mostly unplanned. He might not even have done it if the media hadn't planted the idea in his head that the way to get back at society is a mass shooting. 

The problem is that the Democrats have lost their minds on this issue. They have no connection to gun culture and really don't like the fact that people can own guns. I've been thinking for awhile now that the gun debate is mostly a class issue. The upper classes hate the idea of anything at all that makes the lower classes their equal. And as I have always said, the greatest equalizer of all time is firearms ownership. 

And, if the proposals of people like Robert Francis O'Rourke were to pass in the first place it would not go well for them. The best case scenario is that the Supreme Court rules everything unconstitutional and the law gets overturned and we all get to live our lives out in peace. If not that then you would see massive amounts of resistance with around 95 to 99% of gun owners refusing to turn in their arms, limited acts of terrorism and potentially an insurgency. The worst case scenario is a military coup or a 2nd America Civil War. Gun confiscation is totally off of the table, even if Democrats haven't realized it yet. 

Of course, I think the whole discussion is moot in the first place. New gun laws won't do anything to prevent this because even if every gun in the country were to disappear overnight you would still have people running amok. Even Japan, famous for it's peaceful society and almost total lack of civilian gun ownership, has had problems with people either going on stabbing sprees or arson sprees. 

The real problem is why so many young men feel the need to kill large numbers of innocent people in the first place. That's the elephant in the room and nobody is really addressing it, other than the racists who blame everything on "white privilege" while conveniently ignoring all the mass shootings done by non-whites. 

My personal thought is that this problem is inherent in our current political system. There is an entire generation of young men who feel they have no hope for a better future, no say in the direction of the country and a media and political environment that ludicrously hostile against them. That's a problem that has nothing to do with America's gun laws and it a much harder thing to fix than passing a new law. As long as the Democrats and the left in this country completely ignore their contribution to the problem of mass killings they will continue.