Whenever there’s a mass shooting of any kind, anti-gunners are going to start using it to push for their pet gun control projects. Right now, a lot of people are using the shooting in Aurora, Illinois on Friday to justify things like universal background checks.

I’ve called them out on that degree of ridiculousness since the shooter had passed two background checks despite his felony conviction.

Now, none other than John Lott is doing the same thing:

On Friday, another mass public shooting occurred in yet another gun-free zone. In fact, the Henry Pratt Company in Aurora, Illinois, where five people were killed on Friday, clearly displays a “no guns” sign on its frontdoor.

This is part of a larger pattern. Ninety-eight percent of mass public shootings since 1950 have occurred in places where people can’t defend themselves.

But as usual, gun control advocates called for more background checks before the facts of the case were even known.

Twice, background checks failed to catch the criminal background of killer Gary Martin. Even worse, the errors that occurred in Illinois were a result of dramatic cuts in funding for background checks.

…

But background checks on private gun transfers wouldn’t have stopped the Parkland high school attack. [The killer] didn’t obtain his rifle through a private transfer. He bought his gun from a licensed gun dealer and underwent a federal background check.

Killers haven’t been getting their guns through private transfers. In fact, universal background checks wouldn’t have stopped a single mass public shooting in this century. But CNN’s John Berman, like other hosts, doesn’t put the burden of proof on gun control advocates. He doesn’t ask them to point to a single example of a mass public shooting that would have been prevented by the proposed law.

And this is why none of us trust the media.

They’ll ask hard questions of gun rights supporters, which is fine, but then softball anti-gunners. They never ask them to defend their positions. Instead, people like Berman like to provide little more than a platform from which anti-gun activists can share their views without ever having them questioned.

I don’t mind when any of ours are asked the tough questions because we should be expected to defend our positions. I’m not talking about “gotcha questions,” either, but legitimately tough, probing questions that require a clear understanding of the subject and the potential solutions.

What I do mind is when people like Berman don’t treat the two sides equally and do the same to gun control proponents.

Such as with regard to universal background checks.

Lott has a much better grasp on statistics than I do. I know I can’t recall a single mass shooting that would have been prevented by universal background checks, but Lott finds that there aren’t any and he’s in the business of keeping track. That should tell you plenty.

Universal background checks didn’t stop the Thousand Oaks shooting, for example. It wouldn’t have stopped Parkland, Las Vegas, Sutherland Springs, Santa Fe High School, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Pulse Orlando, or any other mass shooting you could care to name, so just why should we be jumping all over this kind of thing?