Shannon Watts and her gun prohibitionist bullies at Moms Demand Action have a very bad problem of being almost completely unable to tell the truth.
The murder of Jitka Vesel is a horrible story of a jilted ex-boyfriend turned stalker named Dmitry Smirnov who hunted down and killed Vesel for rejecting him, but Moms Demand lied in a recent claim to the Facebook page when they said that non-citizens are banned from buying firearms, a fact that even the most cursory research would have easily uncovered with a simple Google search.
Both Immigrant Aliens and Legal Permanent Resident Aliens (LPRs) have the legal right to buy a firearm in the United States from any seller, either private sellers or from licensed sellers.
One of those resident aliens, Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review, quickly debunked the Moms Demand lie.
@bob_owens @shannonrwatts I am one. I own three guns and passed a federal and state background check for each of them. Even the AR-15.
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) October 15, 2014
As it actually occurred, Smirnov was not legally allowed to purchase a gun from anyone, either a regular citizen or a FFL, due to his immigrant status. There was no “loophole,” only a very clear criminal purchase. He also bribed a homeless man in Spokane to buy the ammunition he could not legally purchase.
If Watts wants to talk about what might have deterred Dmitry Smirnov, she shouldn’t be focused on gun laws.
She should have looked at the fact that Smirnov researched Illinois’s then-recent decision to abolish the death penalty before deciding to carry out the murder. If they had not abolished the death penalty, Vesel might still be alive, as Smirnov feared the needle more than a life in prison. He asked for and accepted a life sentence.
It is also worth noting that the time, it was also impossible for Vesel to get a concealed carry permit in Illinois to defend herself against her stalker. Concealed carry was only made legal in Illinois in 2013, two long years after she had been murdered by a man who broke existing gun and murder laws to carry out his crime.
Update: Charles C.W. Cooke addresses the continuing deception of Moms Demand action at National Review.
This is astoundingly, willfully, egregiously dishonest. Every single thing that Dmitry Smirnov did was already flatly illegal. Smirnov didn’t utilize any “loopholes”; he didn’t benefit from any ambiguities or exceptions in the law; he wasn’t freed up by a lack of “common sense” prohibitions. He just broke the existing rules.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member