No one can or should downplay how terrible the shooting in Shreveport was. For someone to not just kill children, but try to wipe out every single one of his own kids is something that's beyond rational comprehension.
What wasn't beyond comprehension is that the left would immediately scream for gun control. It's what they do.
Unfortunately for them, this was one of those cases that kind of undermined their arguments. The killer was a convicted felon, one who didn't get any prison time for his crime back in 2019, and who couldn't buy a firearm lawfully.
But when did that ever stop them?
After a gunman killed eight children, seven of them his own kids, in Shreveport, Louisiana on Sunday, advocates are urging policymakers to close "dangerous gaps" in legislation aimed at preventing fatal domestic violence crimes. The tragedy has also brought a renewed focus to the ways in which domestic violence and firearm deaths are connected.
...Former congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who founded a gun violence prevention organization after she was severely wounded in a mass shooting in 2011, pressed leaders in Louisiana and Washington to "act now" to enact reforms. Her organization, which gave Louisiana a failing grade in its latest annual Gun Law Scorecard, noted that the state has some of the weakest gun laws in the nation — as well as some of the highest rates of deaths involving firearms.
Louisiana has enacted legislation in recent years to help protect survivors of domestic violence, including by banning people convicted of domestic abuse or battery from possessing firearms. Although federal law already prevented most people convicted of domestic abuse from owning guns, it did not cover all types of relationships, nor was it reliably enforceable without additional state-level policies, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.
"Unfortunately, Louisiana has other dangerous gaps that make those laws un-impactful," Levy told CBS News, adding that the Shreveport shooting "is the cost" of lawmakers' failure to fill them.
That all sounds good, unless you know what you're talking about, but again, this guy was a convicted felon. Domestic abuser or not, he couldn't own a firearm lawfully.
He also didn't just walk up to some random dude and buy a firearm in a face-to-face transfer.
No, the gun was stolen out of some dudes truck.
A man who previously had the assault-style gun used to kill eight children in Louisiana told investigators he believes [the killer] stole it from his truck in the weeks before the rampage in a Shreveport neighborhood, according to court documents released Tuesday.
Charles Ford told investigators he suspected [the killer], who was the father of seven of the children killed, because he was one of the few people to ride with him, according to a criminal complaint filed in Louisiana federal court. Ford allegedly said it was around March 9 when he noticed the gun was missing.
Ford said he confronted Elkins about the missing weapon. But when [the killer] became “offensive," Ford "let it go," according to a court affidavit filed Tuesday.
The affidavit is in support of federal charges that accuse Ford of being a felon in possession of a firearm and making a false statement to federal agents. He originally denied having the gun when first approached by investigators after the shooting Sunday, according court records.
“[The killer's] death means that our community will never see him face justice,” U.S. Attorney Zachary A. Keller said in a statement. “Our hope, as we continue to investigate and prosecute this case alongside our law enforcement partners, is that holding the person whose gun [he] used to perpetrate the crime accountable will give some small bit of solace to our Shreveport community.”
Ford didn't let the police handle it because he was a felon, too, and couldn't lawfully own a gun, but the truth is that the killer stole the gun from him.
Two felons, one gun, and at least one direct theft of that firearm. Ford allegedly got the gun after the original purchaser handed it to him to hold onto for her when she went into the hospital. Whether she knew he was a felon or not isn't clear right now.
See, for all the talk of gaps in the system for domestic abusers, this was a gun stolen from another convicted felon who got it from someone else who shouldn't have handed it over to him, but likely would have regardless of the laws on the books.
This wasn't because the laws were insufficient. It's because people who want to murder their children aren't really going to be that worried about other laws. Stealing an AR-style rifle isn't that high up on the list of things they wouldn't do. No matter what laws you create, you're never going to stop that.
"But ban assault weapons, and he wouldn't have been able to steal one," some airhead leftist will claim, but here's the thing to remember. AR-style rifles are the most popular form of long gun in this country. Even if you banned them tomorrow, there are millions in circulation. Even if you tried a "buyback" like Canada, you're not getting them all. I'd wager you're not getting most of them.
Instead, those people who have them become criminals, and when one of them gets stolen, it doesn't get reported to the cops, and they don't get to try to head it off before some animal tries to annihilate their entire lineage. Ford didn't call the cops because he couldn't lawfully have the gun in the first place, which just meant it was never retrieved from another convicted felon before his rampage.
Making it illegal for anyone simply means there's less chance of a theft being reported, not it making the guns unavailable.
But that won't stop the left. When have they ever let the facts get in the way of the narrative?