Former congresswoman Gabby Giffords’ op-ed piece is getting a lot of praise on Twitter. This is the part of the piece that caught our attention:

What they will do is create one fair system for all gun buyers, instead of the giant loophole we have now. Right now, we have one system where responsible gun owners take a background check — my husband, Mark, took one just last month, and it took 5 minutes and 36 seconds. I remember waiting a lot longer than that for the subway to take me to my office when I lived in New York City! And then we have a second system for those who don’t want to take a background check. Those people — criminals, or people suffering from mental illness, like the young man who shot me — can buy as many guns as they want on the Internet or at a gun show, no questions asked. That doesn’t make sense. We know how to fix it — by establishing a universal background check system. And yet some of our elected officials are not listening. Some even say this legislation shouldn’t get a vote in the United States Congress. [Emphasis added.]

Giffords seems to be implying that her shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, didn’t undergo a background check. This is not true. Loughner obtained the gun legally, and he passed a background check.

If our background check system doesn’t flag mentally ill people like Loughner, Alice Boland, and Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, something is obviously wrong.

Before expanding the existing system, wouldn’t it make more sense to ensure that our current background checks are implemented properly?

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Hashtag hijack: Libs trend #DoItForGabby; Conservatives respond with hard truths