Even Washington Post Admits No Proposed Gun Laws Would Have Stopped Mass Shootings

December 10th, 2015 4:35 PM

After Florida Senator Marco Rubio rejected demands from the hosts of CBS This Morning for gun control in a recent December 4 interview, Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler took it upon himself to examine the claim. Much to the chagrin of the rest of the liberal media, he found: “Rubio’s statement stands up to scrutiny – at least for the recent past, as he framed it....He earns a rare Geppetto Checkmark.”

Analyzing the facts in 12 recent mass shootings going back to Newtown in 2012, Kessler repeatedly concluded that no laws being pushed by gun control advocates would have prevented the murders. His analysis of 2015 cases:

Dec. 2, 2015: Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., using a Smith & Wesson M&P AR-15 type rifle, a DPMS Panther Arms AR-15 type rifle, a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol and a Llama semiautomatic pistol. The guns were purchased legally and the rifles were purchased legally by a former neighbor. Four high-capacity magazines were found, perhaps holding as many as 30 rounds.

Analysis: California has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, dating from 1989, and specific types of AR-15 and AK-47 style rifles are banned. Ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 bullets are also outlawed, though older, larger magazines are grandfathered. A proposal to pass a federal version of California’s law was defeated in the Senate in 2013. There are indications that the suspects illegally modified their California-compliant weapons. In any case, the laws did not thwart them. (Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, in 2013 vetoed a bill that would have toughened the law, but the guns used in the attack were purchased before the law would have taken effect.)

Oct. 1, 2015: Christopher Harper-Mercer killed nine people at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. He owned 14 firearms and conducted the attack with six of them, including a Glock pistol, a Smith & Wesson pistol, a Taurus pistol and a Del-Ton AR-15 rifle. All were purchased legally.

Analysis: No proposed laws would have prevented these purchases.

July 16, 2015: Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez killed five people and wounded two at the Navy Operational Support Center and Marine Corps Reserve Center in Chattanooga, Tenn. He used an AK-47-style rifle and 9mm handgun, and a shotgun was in his car. He had multiple 30-round magazines, news reports said. Officials said the gun was obtained legally; other weapons were obtained through Armslist.com, an online forum through which individuals can buy and sell firearms through private transactions.

Analysis: The Senate bill to extend background checks would have included online sales. But because Abdulazeez purchased his other weapons legally, thus passing a background check, a crackdown on online sales likely would not have made a difference in this case.

June 17, 2015: Dylann Roof killed nine people with a .45-caliber Glock pistol that held 13 rounds at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C. Roof legally purchased his gun from a store, but the FBI said he should have failed the background check because he had been charged with possessing Suboxone without a prescription. However, because of clerical mistakes, the FBI said the examiner did not get hold of the report before the three-day waiting period ended, and so the store went through with the purchase.

Analysis: This appears to be an example of an existing law that apparently failed, though some analysts believe Roof actually would have passed the background check if it had been done correctly. The FBI statement incorrectly referred to a felony drug charge, but it was actually a misdemeanor for possession; he did not admit to being an addict. There are also reports that his parents took the gun away from him at some point, but then he took it back.    

Kessler concluded: “It is possible that some gun-control proposals, such as a ban on large-capacity magazines, would reduce the number of dead in a future shooting, though the evidence for that is heavily disputed. But Rubio was speaking in the past, about specific incidents. He earns a rare Geppetto Checkmark.”