It hardly requires repeating, but I will repeat it anyway, that the supposition central to cries for gun control after a tragic shooting is that laws preventing people from owning guns would have averted the tragedy.

It should be equally obvious, but again I will state it, that this notion is undermined in situations where it was already illegal for a person to have a gun. They were gun-controlled. They broke the law and had a gun anyway.

That appears to be the case in the Sutherland Springs church massacre, the deadliest such shooting in Texas history.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott says officials don’t know how the church massacre shooter was able to get a gun https://t.co/o3XbwyCdP9 — CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) November 6, 2017

“Devin Kelley sought to get a license to carry a gun in the state of Texas, but the state of Texas denied him THe ability to get a gun. So how was it that he was able to get a gun?”

The Governor is right that the next question, after stipulating that he was legally prevented from owning a gun, is to ask how he came to have one.

Yes, I think “why did he do it” is probably a more pertinent question, but you know as well as I do it won’t be the next question. How he got a gun will be the next one, because that’s how it works, now.

This is from CNN:

Kelley purchased the Ruger AR-556 rifle in April 2016 from an Academy Sports & Outdoors store in San Antonio, a law enforcement official told CNN. When Kelley filled out the background check paperwork at the store, he checked the box to indicate he didn’t have disqualifying criminal history, the official said.

It remains to be seen, though, how accurate this is, and under what circumstances he came to own a gun.

It is safe to say that this murderer who committed this heinous crime was also fine with lying and fraud. His background check denied him a gun license. He got one anyway. That is bad news and someone needs to find out how he did it.

And hey, maybe we can also get the media to ask if this murder of Christians by a hater of Christianity was a hate crime? They’d be asking already if it were a black church. Or a mosque.