Sen. Raphael Warnock of Georgia is one of those people who is going to get a lot of questions about the Apalachee High School shooting. He’s a senator from Georgia, after all, and with his anti-gun stance, you know the media wants to amplify anything he has to say on the matter.

Warnock has been sure not to disappoint his buddies in the media, either. He’s expressed plenty of anti-gun sentiments.

The latest, however, are even more of a problem for me than usual.

Why? Because what he said is the exact opposite of reality.

Americans “are all sitting ducks” unless Congress passes more substantial gun control, US senator Raphael Warnock said Sunday, four days after two students and two teachers at a high school in his home state of Georgia were shot to death, allegedly by a teenager wielding a military-style rifle.

…

Warnock alluded to an April 2023 Fox News poll which reaffirmed that the vast majority of Americans favored strengthening gun safety laws. And he said Congress took an encouraging first step toward treating such public support as a mandate when it enacted bipartisan legislation that expanded background checks for the youngest gun buyers while funding mental health and violence intervention programs.

But what was the first major federal firearms safety bill to pass Congress in nearly three decades was “clearly not enough”, Warnock said, noting how the US continues recording a number of mass shootings that is disproportionate at the global level.

Warnock said polls show most in the US overwhelmingly support universal background checks. Furthermore, Warnock said that large numbers of Americans support banning general access to assault-style rifles and semi-automatic firearms.

Yet federal lawmakers have not been able to get enough votes to clear procedural hurdles preventing Congress from meaningfully consider either issue. Warnock on Sunday blamed that reality on congressmembers who – out of ambition or fear – accept financial support from the wealthy gun industry.

In other words, Warnock says we’re all sitting ducks, and his answer is to turn us all into sitting ducks. 

NBC: Should Kamala try to pass mandatory gun confiscation, which she has repeatedly said she supports?

Top Harris surrogate Raphael Warnock: “We’re not going to be able to get where we need to go without action.”

NBC: Yes or no?

Warnock: Yes pic.twitter.com/YqRSeaGyL1

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 8, 2024

Warnock didn’t actually say “yes”, but he also didn’t say “no.” Instead, he tried to dance around the issue by saying he’s done “buybacks” as a pastor. That’s completely different than the mandatory confiscation scheme pushed by Harris just five years ago, and the fact that Warnock couldn’t give a straight “yes” or “no” answer to a simple question about the mandatory “buyback” speaks volumes. 

Let’s understand a few other things that the good senator has clearly missed or doesn’t want to talk about.

First, universal background checks not only wouldn’t have prevented the Apalachee High School shooting–the killer’s father apparently purchased the firearm lawfully and wasn’t prohibited from doing so even if he hadn’t– they stop criminals from buying guns. We know from the ATF’s own reports that guns end up in criminal hands either directly or indirectly due to theft, not otherwise lawful gun sales. Does he really believe that criminals will start requiring other criminals to fill out Form 4473s and getting NICS background checks?

Of course they won’t.

But it does put up a barrier for good, decent, law-abiding people concerned about their own safety. It might not seem like one, but it is. There are a number of situations where universal background check requirements can leave people disarmed when they find themselves needing to defend themselves. These aren’t prohibited people I’m talking about, either.

So-called assault weapon bans may have some polling support, but most people aren’t aware of the impact a semi-auto ban might have on hunting firearms or even the pistols they keep in their nightstands.

It would ban the most popular operating system for firearms in the nation, something that I don’t think would hold up to constitutional scrutiny under Bruen’s history, text, and tradition standard in a million years, especially if you apply that whole “in common use” thing that the courts have embraced.

And that’s good, because every measure Warnock supports, ostensible so we won’t be “sitting ducks,” will make us sitting ducks. That’s what gun control is good at and nothing else. It would disempower each and every one of us while criminals would continue doing what they do.

Let’s remember that the Virginia Tech massacre is still the most deadly school shooting in American history. The killer used a couple of handguns.

Let’s remember that Columbine happened during the middle of the previous assault weapon ban.

There’s no reason to believe any of this will help anything except to allow criminals to do as they wish with even less fear of the good guys. T

The Apalachee High shooting ended because of good guys with guns. Imagine how quickly it could have ended if the good guys with guns weren’t so far away? Imagine if the first adult on the scene had been one of those good guys with guns.

Our gun rights don’t make us sitting ducks. People like Sen. Raphael Warnock has turned us into sitting ducks.