Someone at the HuffPo recently penned this article.
The premise?
Even if the bullet button loophole did not exist and possessing assault-style rifles of any kind had been illegal in California from the get-go, the shooters could have easily acquired even more powerful weapons in a neighboring state with more lenient laws — a fact that attests to the limits of state gun regulations in a country where gun laws vary widely from one state to the next.
All four guns used in the massacre were purchased legally in California. Farook purchased the handguns in California, police said. Someone else bought the rifles in California, the ATF confirmed to HuffPost on Friday.
We have rifles, purchased in state under (arguably) the strictest gun control regime in the country. But instead of concentrating on the facts, we have a great fantasy that should scare you. Even though those controls failed, you should worry about the states next door. They MUST be a source of bad guns for bad guys.
Except, there is a problem with that. In 2014, CA recovered 34,890 firearms. The ATF was able to trace 21,267 to their source states. Of those 21,267, guess where over FIFTEEN THOUSAND came from? That’s 71% for those interested in statistics.
About 10% came from all the neighboring states combined. Is 2000 a big number? Does that even matter when 70% of the guns are sourced through the system that is supposed to prevent that?
It would be great if we could make policy decisions based on actual data. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
The ATF tracks this stuff for those interested in the source data.