Retweeting right-wing Breitbart News, Texas senator Ted Cruz
on Monday commented
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Gun control doesn’t work. Look at Chicago. Disarming
law-abiding citizens isn’t the answer. Stopping violent criminals—prosecuting
& getting them off the street—BEFORE they commit more violent crimes is the
most effective way to reduce murder rates. Let’s protect our citizens.
Huffington Post reports
In reply, Lightfoot told Cruz to “keep our name out of your
mouth.”
In the same tweet, she posted a graph showing how nearly 60%
of the illegal firearms that were recovered in the city between 2013 and 2016
actually came from outside Illinois.
They were, Lightfoot wrote, “mostly from states dominated by
coward Republicans like you who refuse to enact commonsense gun
legislation.”
Among the laws the federal government needs to enact is one
requiring a background check on all private gun transactions, aside from the
transfer of a firearm from one individual to a member of his immediate family.
Currently, according to the Brennan Center
Twelve states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware,
Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont,
and Washington) and the District of Columbia require universal background checks
at the point of sale for all sales and transfers of all classes of firearms,
whether they are purchased from a licensed dealer or an unlicensed seller.
Not surprisingly, things are much different in Ted Cruz's state, inasmuch as
handgun license holders in Texas are exempt from the federal
background check requirement when purchasing a handgun.2 (Note, however, that
people who have become prohibited from possessing firearms may continue to hold
state firearms licenses if the state fails to remove these licenses in a timely
fashion.)
Texas does not require private sellers (sellers who are not
licensed dealers) to initiate a background check when transferring a firearm.
This should be quite inconvenient for its junior senator. We were reminded , slightly less than 24 hours after Cruz's tweet, of
the deadly consequences of policies in such states as Texas because
A law enforcement
official says a gunman who killed seven people in West Texas had obtained his
AR-style rifle through a private sale, evading a federal background check.
The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of
anonymity on Tuesday because the person was not authorized to discuss an
ongoing investigation.
Officials said Seth Aaron Ator had previously tried to
obtain a gun but failed a federal background check.
Obtaining the weapon through a private sale, as opposed to
buying it through a licensed gun dealer, would've allowed Ator to skirt the
background check.
And Ted Cruz remains among the very few things senators Lindsey
Graham and Al Franken agreed about:
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