Gun Lobby Up in Arms After Learning that D. C. Navy Yard Suspect Was Stopped From Buying an Assault Weapon by Gun Regulations

News That Didn’t Happen, But Could Have

A sidebar of the horrific tragedy at the Navy Yards in Washington is this information from the New York Times.

State Law Stopped Gunman From Buying Rifle, Officials Say

By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

WASHINGTON — The gunman who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday test fired an AR-15 assault rifle at a Virginia gun store last week but was stopped from buying one because state law there prohibits the sale of such weapons to out-of-state buyers, according to two senior law enforcement officials.

Upon learning of this the Gun Lobby did not issue a statement and the following news story is not true.

Washington September 2013 (AP)  The national gun lobby today said that the they believed that the horrific loss of life in the shootings at the D. C. Navy Yard was secondary to the fact that the alleged gunman was denied the right to buy an assault rifle.

“We think that the tragedy of a man being denied his God given, Constitutionally given, and Satan given right to buy as many assault weapons as he wanted is worse than the fact that a bunch of people were gunned down.  Think about it, those people who were  killed had to die knowing that they died by ordinary weapons and not from an assault rifle that they would have wanted to have been killed by.”

The Gun Lobby went on to add that the fact that a great number of additional people would probably have died had the assailant been allowed to purchase an assault rifle is not relevant to the discussion.

“Liberals and bleeding heart freedom haters will try to say that the regulation stopped an even greater slaughter, but that is a pretty steep price to pay for keeping mentally ill persons from owning a weapon of mass killing.  How can any sane or rational person equate probable murder prevention with the inalienable right of a disturbed person to go out and buy an AR 15?”

The responses to the Gun Lobby statement were numerous, but almost all could be paraphrased to say “These people are nuts”.