By: Teresa Mull

A longtime city employee opened fire at the Virginia Beach Municipal Center yesterday, killing 12 people before being shot and killed by police.

Heavy.com reports:

“It’s a horrific day for Virginia,” said Gov. Ralph Northam at one of the press conferences authorities held in the wake of the mass shooting. “It’s just a horrific day. Our thoughts are with these victims and their families.” The gunman used a .45 caliber handgun with a silencer and multiple extended magazines, the police chief said. The shooter and officers engaged in a lengthy “gun battle.”

In a press conference, the governor stressed that more might have lost their lives without the quick response of law enforcement officers and medics. “Their actions likely saved lives,” he said. They have seen injuries and scenes “no one should have to face,” he said. The mayor called it Virginia Beach’s “darkest hour.” The scene was active for so long that local journalists reported hearing gunshots when they arrived.

Thetruthaboutguns.com reports liberals are already taking advantage of the tragedy to promote their own political talking points:

GPM’s Ted Patterson reminds us there isn’t actually any evidence to support the race for stricter and stricter background checks and government hoops for buying a gun.

Dr. John Lott, Ph.D., President of the Crime Prevention Research Center, reports:

“States with these background checks experienced an increase of 15 percent in per capita rates of mass public shooting fatalities. They also saw a 38 percent increase in the rate of injury. Nor is there evidence that expanded background checks reduce rates of any type of violent crime, including mass public shootings, suicide, murder of police officers and domestic violence against women. Other academic research by economists and criminologists consistently confirms this.”
In his groundbreaking research on this topic, Lott and other researchers show the truth:

pattersongraph
(Source: Do Background Checks on Private Gun Transfers Help Stop Mass Public Shootings? By John R. Lott Jr. January 2, 2016. Crime Prevention Research Center.

Professor C.D. Michel from Chapman University School of Law points out another inconvenient truth:

“In a report titled ‘Firearm Use by Offenders’, our own Federal Government noted that nearly 40 percent of all crime guns are acquired from street level dealers, who are criminals in the black market business of peddling stolen and recycled guns. Standing alone, this shows that ‘universal’ background checks would have an incomplete effect on guns used in crimes.”

Source: Why universal background checks won’t work


After devastating attacks in Copenhagen and Paris, the Washington Post and European leaders were forced to acknowledge that even though they have all but banned firearms in Europe and constructed very intrusive background check systems, criminals are still getting what they need to harm people.

First thing’s first — and the mainstream, drive-by media, just can’t get this through their heads: criminals do not care what regulations you put in place. They are going to illegally acquire firearms by any means possible.

Any background check legislation affects law-abiding gun owners, not criminals. What these politicians are doing is leaving the very people we would want armed bogged down in government red tape.

Let’s not forget that Nikolas Cruz, the shooter in the recent Parkland, Florida school shooting passed his background check. Even the liberal New York Times had to admit the truth, reporting on an ATF agent who admitted of the Florida shooter:

“No laws were violated in the procurement of this weapon.”

We had an assault weapons ban from 1994 to 2004 — and what did that accomplish?

Teresa Mull is editor of Gunpowder Magazine. Contact her at [email protected].