Supporters of gun control will tell you gun control works. They point to a bunch of studies they swear prove it does, though none of them actually do. Even if taken at face value, they show a correlation versus causation, but none should be taken at face value anyway.
Meanwhile, a recent high-profile murder-suicide by a vocal leftist shatters at least some of the myths these folks cling to.
You see, this happened in Minnesota. It happened in Tim Walz's home state, where they require a permit to purchase a handgun.
"No big deal," you might say. "He could have bought the gun illegally."
And, of course, he could have.
The problem is that he didn't:
The man suspected of killing four people and himself last week had previously threatened his wife with a knife and said he wanted his family killed if Donald Trump became president.
Search warrants filed this week in the West Duluth murder-suicide investigation also reveal that Anthony “Tony” Nephew applied for and received a gun permit in September, two months after being hospitalized following the domestic assault call.
Authorities believe Nephew, 46, fatally shot his ex-partner, Erin Abramson, 47, and their son, Jacob Nephew, 15, before going to his own home and killing his wife, Kathryn "Kat" Nephew Ramsland, 45, and their son, Oliver Nephew, 7.
Nephew had openly discussed mental health struggles in the past, saying the issue was “left untreated or ignored by society” and ominously foreshadowing in a 2021 News Tribune op-ed: “For millions of Americans, a breakdown leads to suicide — or homicide before suicide.”
The warrants indicate a city of Superior employee contacted police Thursday, Nov. 7, after Abramson failed to report to work. It was considered “odd for her,” and she had told a co-worker that Tony Nephew had been going “off the deep end.”
So, he was openly discussing his mental health issues – issues I'm sympathetic to because I've had my own struggles with depression and anxiety – and actually talked about suicide and murder, yet was still able to get a permit to purchase a firearm.
Now, I'm not saying he shouldn't. Clearly, in hindsight, it's easy to say that, but that's easy to say here and now. The question is was this enough of a reason to deny someone their right to keep and bear arms, and as much as it pains me to say it, it's not. It only pains me because the easy answer is to say it is when the reality is that a lot of people who would never do any such thing would get jammed up and denied their rights.
But let's focus on something else for a moment, that's the fact that Minnesota requires a permit to purchase a handgun. That means, in theory, that it keeps people who shouldn't own guns from getting them.
In Minnesota, they think a lot of people shouldn't own guns. By their own standards, Nephew was a prime example of such a person, yet he got the required permit. He got it during the build-up to the election, a time when it looked like Trump would win, an eventuality that came to pass.
If permit-to-purchase requirements are specifically designed to keep people who shouldn't own guns from buying them, and if they're so alarmed by people with depression and such getting firearms, then how could they manage to not prevent this at all? How did the state's red flag law fail to prevent such an awful thing?
Look, I get that a lot of people find discussions like this distasteful, and I do as well, but the fact remains that this is going to be politicized anyway and it'll be done by those who want to use this to push for more gun control despite the clear indications that gun control failed spectacularly.