Even Lindsey's soulmate knows he was wrong about background checks
We still don't know how the Boston Marathon bombers bought the guns that they used to attack police, killing one officer and seriously injuring another, but what we do know is that last week Senate Republicans and a handful of Democrats blocked legislation making it tougher to buy a gun without clearing a background check. Asked about that yesterday, Sen. Lindsey Graham
said:
Local and federal law enforcement officials either don’t know or aren’t yet saying how Tsarnaev and his brother, accused of bombing the Boston Marathon, obtained the guns they later used to kill a university police officer and critically injure a mass-transit officer. They didn’t apply for Massachusetts gun permits, as required by state law.
“I don’t know where they got the guns, that’s a good question,” Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, told reporters in a briefing yesterday. [...] “Where did they get the bombs? Apparently these folks had a small munitions factory,” said Graham.
Someone needs to tell Lindsey Graham these guys didn't jump on Ebay and order a half dozen bombs. Sure, if it were legal to go buy ready-made improvised explosive devices, it would make sense to have background checks, but if the NRA decided the Second Amendment covered IEDs, I'm sure Graham would be against that too.
What Graham's non-sequitor shows that requiring background checks for gun purchases is such a no-brainer that politicians who vote against them would rather change the topic than defend their position. That raises the question of why they didn't vote the right way in the first place, but the answer to that is clear: For too many senators, the gun lobby comes first, even before 90 percent of the public.