By Dave Workman | Senior Editor
Washington Navy Yard aerial view
The rush by anti-gunners to exploit the mass shooting at the Naval Sea Systems Command headquarters in southeast Washington, D.C. quickly backfired as more information became available that refuted initial reports about the gunman’s firearms, how he got them, and about mass shootings in general.
Slain Navy yard shooter Aaron Alexis, 34, was only armed with a legally-purchased Remington Model 870 Express pump shotgun when he entered the installation and opened fire. Sources told TGM that he apparently took a pistol from the security guard he shot, plus a spare magazine. CNN was first to acknowledge that early information about Alexis being armed with an AR 15 may have been erroneous and that was ultimately confirmed by the FBI, but one reporter, Jackie Bensen with the local NBC affiliate, appeared to be the first to question authorities about the guns involved, and raise questions that led other reporters to start digging.
TGM learned that Alexis purchased the shotgun from a Virginia gun dealer two days before the incident, and he went through a background check. He also bought two small boxes of buckshot shells, totaling about 24 rounds, according to an attorney for the gun shop, who traded e-mail with TGM.
But those revelations did not come until after anti-gunners pressed the narrative that Alexis had entered the facility with an AR-15, shotgun and handgun.
Anti-gun Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California wasted no time in exploiting the shooting to push her perennial gun ban agenda, however. Likewise, the Brady Campaign and the Washington Post editorial board also came out swinging for more restrictive gun laws, and White House spokesman Jay Carney said President Barack Obama is “implementing executive actions and reiterated his commitment to strengthening gun laws, including expanding background checks to sales online and at gun shows.”
The Washington Post board demanded in an Op-Ed, “How did he acquire his weapons (an AR-15 assault rifle, a shotgun and a semiautomatic pistol were reportedly found on him), and how did he bring them onto a gated facility?”
The Brady Campaign’s Dan Gross accused “the corporate gun lobby’s friends in Congress” of obstructing extremist gun control measures his lobbying organization advocates. He also offered, “While it is too early to know what policies might have prevented this latest tragedy, we do know that policies that present a real opportunity to save lives sit stalled in Congress, policies that could prevent many of the dozens of deaths that result every day from gun violence.”
CNN’s Piers Morgan went on a verbal rant, asserting that Alexis had legally purchased an AR-15 in Virginia.
But as the dust began to settle on the crime, Bloomberg News reported that in three decades, there were 78 public mass shootings in this country that accounted for 547 people, which amounts to less than 0.1 percent of the 559,347 total murder victims logged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation during that period.
Bloomberg News quoted Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, co-author of Extreme Killing, which discusses mass shootings.
“Our tendency is to go overboard and overreach in terms of trying to increase levels of security,” Fox said. “The fear is greater than the risk.”
Yet gun prohibitionists have been claiming that mass shootings are more frequent.
The disparity may be between what Bloomberg called “public” shootings that were “random.”
Bloomberg’s story also noted, “In a database of mass killings since 2006 compiled by USA Today, roughly half of all instances where more than four died were motivated by a family dispute of some kind, while 30 percent start as robberies or burglaries. Just 20 percent were the type of public, random killings that occurred in Washington, the newspaper said.”
CNN and other news agencies also began reporting that the three weapons recovered at the scene were the shotgun and two handguns, and that “sources say were handguns, may have been taken from guards at the Navy complex.”
The Remington 870, first introduced in 1951, has been used by generations of sportsmen and law enforcement professionals. It has been used by the military and private security firms, and homeowners for home protection. There are model variations that address a variety of needs, from shooting quail to big game.
Sources have told TGM that Alexis fatally shot a security guard, took his sidearm and a spare magazine, and then engaged a response team, wounding one officer in the process. He fired on other victims from above a cafeteria area.
Feinstein was quick to seek a microphone, declaring, “This is one more event to add to the litany of massacres that occur when a deranged person or grievance killer is able to obtain multiple weapons — including a military-style assault rifle — and kill many people in a short amount of time. When will enough be enough?”
But then their narrative began falling apart with revelations that Alexis apparently did not have an AR-15 at all.
Authorities are still trying to determine what ignited the rampage. Alexis’ background shows that he did have trouble with the law, in Seattle, WA and Fort Worth, TX.
The case is raising some embarrassing questions for anti-gunners that began to surface after the Fort Hood massacre. On a military installation, one would think many personnel just might be carrying at least sidearms. But that is not the case. These are essentially “gun free zones” and that seems like madness to critics who argue that if we trust military personnel with tanks, artillery, jet bombers, aircraft carriers, missiles and mortars, why don’t we trust them to carry small arms while on duty?
The story took on a different tone after the first day, when the gunman’s background began surfacing. He had been in trouble with the law in Seattle and Fort Worth, both times discharging handguns. In neither case was he charged with a crime. Had he been, according to a law enforcement source, it might have prevented him from getting a security clearance to work on at the Navy Yard.
