The gun lobby accidentally got an endorsement from Al Qaeda recently when the terrorist group’s American-born spokesman Adam Gadahn urged followers in a video to take advantage of the gun show loophole, which allows people to buy firearms from private sellers without a background check or even ID.
“This is a golden opportunity. America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms,” he said. “You can go down to a gun show and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle without a background check. So what are you waiting for?”
Mayors Against Illegal Guns, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s activist group, has made Gadahn the star of its most recent ad:
A Justice Department spokesman told The Huffington Post that the administration “supports closing the gun show loophole so that criminals and other people who are prohibited by law from purchasing guns can’t acquire them.”
Nonetheless, gun control is an issue on which Obama has disappointed the left–and urban residents in particular–with his lax approach. Democratic leaders have tended to avoid the issue since the 2000 presidential election, when many of them blamed Al Gore’s stance on gun control for his loss in the states of West Virginia and Tennessee.
