CNN reports today that the shooter in Charleston did not in fact receive his handgun from his father — possibly in violation of a host of federal and state laws — but bought it himself in a store:
He himself bought the .45-caliber handgun used in the shooting last April at a Charleston gun store, according to the two officials. Earlier, a senior law enforcement official had indicated that [his] father bought him a Glock firearm for his birthday.
This means that he passed a background check — a background check of precisely the sort that gun control advocates wish to extend to all transactions.
As I suggested yesterday, none of President Obama’s proposals have anything whatsoever to do with this case. The killer did not use an “assault weapon” (either as defined by Dianne Feinstein or the defunct 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act); he did not use a “high capacity” magazine; and he did not obtain his gun through a private transaction. Obama can stand up and lecture Americans for not “doing something” if he wishes, but he will eventually have to acknowledge that his own on-the-record ideas simply do not intersect with this case. Is he calling for confiscation now?
If the CNN report is accurate, the big question for the gun control movement is this: How did a man who was legally ineligible to own a firearm manage to pass one of the background checks that we are told ad nauseam are vital to the nation’s security?