Ignorant, misleading gun control reporting by Washington Post

by Dan Lucas

There is some ignorant, misleading reporting by Juliet Eilperin in her article yesterday in the Washington Post. She writes that President Obama is using the recent shooting in Oregon to justify “circumventing Congress with his executive authority and imposing new background-check requirements for buyers.”

Her article should have pointed out that Oregon ALREADY HAS background checks on ALL gun purchases!

Oregon (and the nation) have had required background checks on purchases from gun dealers since 1994, Oregon has required background checks from gun shows since 2000 (closing that so-called ‘loophole’), and “universal” background checks on individual purchases (that supposedly closed the ‘Internet loophole’) since August of this year.

So how can Oregon be used to justify President Obama’s planned executive actions?

The Washington Post knows about Oregon requiring background checks on ALL gun purchases, and so does President Obama – check out this Washington Post article from May of this year.

Ms. Eilperin herself mentions “Gun-control activists have made significant political headway on the state level since the Newtown shooting. In the past year, they prevailed on background check fights in Washington state and Oregon.” But she doesn’t bother to explain what that fight was – that Oregon now has background checks on ALL gun purchases!

And background checks didn’t stop the killer at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. The ATF has reported that all of those guns were “purchased legally” from a “federal firearms dealer” by the killer or a family member (his mom?) – which means they passed background checks to buy them. Just like the killer in the South Carolina church shooting passed a background check and the Virginia Tech shooter passed a background check, as well as many others.

Ms. Eilperin goes on to report about former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and her husband, Mark Kelly meeting at the White House recently to discuss expanding background checks, but Ms. Eilperin doesn’t mention that Giffords’ attacker PASSED A BACKGROUND CHECK – something Mark Kelly has admitted on one of his trips to Oregon.

Why would all of that critical and relevant information be omitted from Ms. Eilperin’s reporting?

To read more from Dan, visit www.dan-lucas.com