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AJCongress Says Racist's Rampage Sends Message to Congress: Gun Checks
Save Lives.
Smith Was Turned Away After a Background Check
NEW YORK, July 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The Midwest Region of the American Jewish Congress, based in Chicago, today sent the following message to the U.S. Congress following the shooting spree by racist Benjamin Nathaniel Smith: gun checks save lives.
The text of the statement, by Midwest Region Executive Director Joel Rubin, is as follows:
When Benjamin Nathaniel Smith was turned away by a legal gun dealer because he failed a background check, he was not upset, news reports say, but then proceeded to an unlicensed dealer and bought the weapons believed to have been used in his deadly shooting rampage against minorities that killed two and wounded nine.
Memo to Congress: gun checks save lives.
In this case, it was the Illinois firearms system that prevented Smith from buying the guns he wanted for his killing spree, but the implications are clear to those in Congress held in the thrall of the National Rifle Association: tough gun control legislation passed on the federal level, supplementing statutes such as those found in Illinois, can keep guns out of the hands of psychopaths like Smith.
For those who would say that Smith would have gotten his guns anyway, as he did by going to an illegal dealer, we reply: crack down on illegal dealers and get their guns off the streets. Just today, charges were brought in Peoria against the illegal dealer who allegedly sold Smith his guns. The dealer is now in custody, but it is too late for Benjamin Smith's victims. The House of Representatives, in particular, has disgraced itself by its servile response to the NRA's demands. If Littleton, Colorado weren't enough to prove the value of gun control legislation, then Rogers Park, Skokie, Northbrook, Evanston, Springfield, Decatur, Urbana, and Bloomington perhaps can convey the message.
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