The most raucous moment in Joe Biden‘s generally raucous State of the Union address occurred when the President was heckled by Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who demanded that Biden say the name of a young woman who’d been killed weeks before, allegedly by an undocumented migrant.
Biden took the bait and expressed sympathy for the family of Laken Riley, “an innocent young woman who was killed by an illegal,” as the President described her. (Some say Biden mispronounced the late student’s first name.)
Riley’s death, as the Greene-Biden SOTU exchange showed, quickly became a political touchstone, putting a tragic real-life face on the scary stories MAGA tells about the migrants at the border — migrants which former President Donald Trump says are “poisoning the blood of our country.”
This week’s move by Biden to expand gun control — and close a loophole — by making background check criteria the same whether one buys a gun at a gun store, or a gun show, or online is getting a lot of blowback from MAGA adherents and other conservatives who claim it’s further infringement on their 2nd amendment rights.
But MAGA — especially those fixated on the potential criminality of undocumented migrants — will also see that Biden’s new move is designed to prevent various people from being able to legally purchase guns, including the people MAGA purports to fear most.
The list includes people like Riley’s alleged killer, who is — as Biden said (to some consternation from the left) — an “illegal.” Illegal aliens can’t pass firearms background checks. Nor can anyone who is a fugitive from justice or meets any of the other deal-breaking criteria shown below:
After today, people who pass background checks will still be able to buy a gun. People who can’t pass background checks will have a much harder time getting their hands on one.
Those people are: pic.twitter.com/9KefPmMDQy
— Chris Harris (@ChrisHarrisKC) April 11, 2024
As Chris Harris says in sharing the post, “After today, people who pass background checks will still be able to buy a gun. People who can’t pass background checks will have a much harder time getting their hands on one.”