FBI Report on Alexandria Shooting Throws Cold Water on Calls for More Gun Control

You will recall that last week, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe used his time at the microphone to call for more gun control after the assassination attempt on several Republican congressional members in Alexandria.  It would seem from a brief FBI Report on the shooting that was just released that none of the things that McAuliffe called for would have prevented the attack.  National Review's Charles Cooke has the details:

For a start, the guns weren’t bought in Virginia; they were bought in Illinois, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the country. And they weren’t purchased privately, illegally, or without attendant background checks, but “legally through federal firearms licensees” that are obliged under federal law to run checks. Moreover, Hodgkinson only got the weapons after he obtained an additional possession-and-purchase license (FOID) of the sort that more extreme gun-control advocates want to see made mandatory in all states.

Or, put another way: Illinois has stricter rules than even Barack Obama endorsed — it quite literally licenses all gun-owners in the state — and those rules made no difference to this case. This is not rare. It is typical.

McAuliffe likes to talk about so-called "universal" background checks but the shooter passed background checks - twice - so, exactly how would criminalizing the private sale of personal property between gun owners have stopped the shooter in this case?  Read Cooke's full article as he provides even more details on where the gun ban crowd got everything wrong on this. But that's not really unexpected, is it.