One of the favorite talking points of the militia movement and, by extension, of do-nothing Republican politicians is that tightening background checks for people looking to buy guns would be useless. It wouldn't really save lives, they say.
Yet another new case out of Texas once again disproves that. Local NBC news reporter Merideth Yeomans writes that a 27-year-old Fort Worth man was, according to his own father, who called police, planning to execute a mass shooting in the style of the recent Odessa attack. He withdrew hundreds of dollars from his account and began making the rounds of local gun stores.
But there was a problem: He failed the required background checks, so the gun stores couldn’t sell to him. The man then tried to purchase a gun in a private sale, but by that point the Fort Worth Police Department’s crisis team was able to track him down.
It was that delay, the delay caused by the would-be mass shooter being rejected after failing background checks, that gave police the time they needed to find him after being tipped off by his father. Without the background checks, he would have succeeded in arming himself for his plans at the very first gun shop he visited.
Background checks played a role in the Odessa mass shooting this new gunman was attempting to emulate as well. The Odessa shooter was banned from purchasing weapons, but was able to purchase his gun in a private sale, evading background checks.
Stopping new gun legislation has been the obsession of the National Rifle Association, which regularly lies about supporting background check efforts while relentlessly working to thwart efforts to close the gaping loopholes that allow known violent criminals to bypass the background check system entirely. Donald Trump has recently vaguely implied that he might perhaps do something to strengthen the checks—but told embattled chief NRA grifter Wayne LaPierre directly that universal background checks were off the table.
That means that local police will continue to have very little time to try to chase down would-be mass shooters, even when given tipoffs about what they're planning. Because even if gun stores are prohibited from selling guns to individuals already known to be dangerous to the public, the National Rifle Association has spent a great deal of effort to ensure that its own members can sell such people whatever guns they have the cash to buy.