One thing I’ve noticed in discussing guns and gun control with others is that there are a lot of people who support gun control who can’t present a single piece of actual data to support their position. Most can’t tell you how many people get shot each year or how many violent crimes there are, none of the stuff we routinely see in anti-gun news stories or columns.

The reason is that much of gun control’s support is emotionally-driven, not fact-based.

Democrats know this. They know it, and they’re not afraid to use it to try and drive home their goals. A prime example was how they introduced their first piece of gun control legislation yesterday. They did it on the anniversary of Gabby Giffords being shot.

House Democrats unveiled legislation on Tuesday to require universal background checks for gun purchases as one of their first moves in a newly empowered majority.

The bill’s introduction came eight years to the day after the deadly shooting rampage that nearly killed former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), who since then has become one of the nation’s most prominent advocates for tougher gun laws.

Democrats touted the bill as a significant shift from eight years of GOP rule in the House, a period when the nation experienced the deadliest incidents of gun violence in its history but saw zero action on the issue from the lower chamber.

The new background check bill is designated H.R. 8 in an implicit rebuke of House Republicans.

“So many times after we’ve had a tragedy … we would vote on the floor and have a moment of silence. And that’s it. Silence, no action,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said while discussing the new bill.

Now, Pelosi said, “we say, enough is enough.”

Note how Pelosi tries to manipulate the facts to stir emotion?

Republicans have opposed universal background checks because they don’t work.

For one thing, none of the mass shooters in recent years have purchased their guns via face-to-face sales that currently don’t require a background check. Pelosi invokes mass shootings but fails to acknowledge that this bill has nothing to do with mass shootings in general or Giffords’ shooting in particular. The gunman who shot her passed a freaking background check.

The same is true of Las Vegas, Sutherland Springs, and Parkland, just to name a few. In those cases, only the Sutherland Springs killer was someone who shouldn’t have passed a background check, yet he did.

Universal background checks aren’t the answer to any “epidemic” of mass shootings in this country.

Mass shooters tend to have a history of violence, but too many of them aren’t prosecuted. Such prosecutions, assuming they’re convicted, would make them ineligible to purchase a firearm and likely would have gone a long way toward stopping these attacks from happening.

But Pelosi and company don’t care about that. They’re trying to leverage the outrage and emotional turmoil that comes in the aftermath of mass shootings to try and convince people that this bill will somehow make the problem go away.

It won’t.

When it doesn’t, they’ll use that same leverage to infringe on the Second Amendment rights of ordinary Americans even further. They don’t give a damn about those rights. They want what they want, and they’re not afraid to pretend whatever they need to to get it.