Brady President Dan Gross’ CNN op-ed yesterday states we’ve reached a “tipping point” on gun control—but nowhere in his 875-word missive did he present any real evidence. 

Gross claims a “pop culture echo chamber” is forming, but can cite only two comedy shows (“SNL” and “Blackish”) and a tweet by Kim Kardashian. But Hollywood’s been staunchly and vocally anti-gun for decades. This hardly constitutes a new trend.

He mentions the presidential race, but there’s no tipping point here, either: Anti-gun Democrats are nothing new. And the supposed backlash against “candidates who side with the gun lobby” appears entirely manufactured—especially since exactly zero Republicans have renounced their pro-gun stance. (In fact, the only backpedaling on guns has come from Hillary Clinton’s camp.)

Gross’ appeal to opinion polls fares no better: One is nearly three years old, and the other shows opinions holding steady. There appears to be no tipping point here—or really any point at all.

When you rob a gun store, should you be surprised if you’re met with return fire? That’s exactly the reception that three ski mask-wearing men received when they attempted to rob Fred’s Gun Emporium in Lubbock, Texas. 

The armed robbers demanded money and cash, and shot an employee in the ankle during the heist. The employee, who was also carrying a gun, fired back, causing the men to flee the scene. They sped off in a car before police arrived, and got away with an undetermined amount of money and store items.

The wounded employee is in University Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries. The three thieves remain at large, and police are gathering and processing surveillance video from the scene.

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings announced that he has officially signed on with the group Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a smokescreen for Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety. Rawlings said Bloomberg approached him a few years ago, but the Dallas mayor said he wanted to study the issue first. 

The organization is supported by 1,000 current and former mayors nationwide. Rawlings will be the eighth Texas mayor to join the association of gun-control zealots. Part of the group’s stated purpose is to beat back “the Washington gun lobby,” meaning the National Rifle Association. When has the NRA ever come out in support of “illegal” guns?

The mayor said he waded into politically troublesome territory with the controversial organization because he believes he can convey a “unifying” message of tougher enforcement. As an anti-gun front for Bloomberg’s billions, nothing about Mayors Against Illegal Guns is unifying—except maybe unified in tearing down our Second Amendment rights.

In an interview on WPHT’s Dom Giordano Show on Tuesday, Republican presidential contender Dr. Ben Carson tacitly called for an end to so-called “gun-free zones.” 

While discussing his book A More Perfect Union: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties, Carson pointed out the madness of forcing good people to give up their means of self-defense against killers who are emboldened and empowered by that act of surrender. 

“When you look at some of these gun tragedies that have occurred, it’s quite amazing how they seem to occur in the gun-free zones,” Carson said. “A lot of these shooters are people who are mentally unstable, but they’re not so unstable that they don’t recognize that, ‘If I’m going to kill a lot of people, I need to go to a place where people are not likely to have guns and kill me.’”

Andrew Branca at Legal Insurrection deftly dissected a “study” purporting to have found racial bias in the application of Florida’s Stand Your Ground (SYG) law. The study’s abstract states, “We frame our study using Public Health Critical Race Theory (PHCRT) Methodology. PHCRT is a conceptual framework that builds upon critical race theory (CRT) …” 

A Web search turns up this definition of CRT from UCLA’s School of Public Affairs: “CRT recognizes that racism is engrained in the fabric and system of the American society.” In other words, the study started with the assumption that racism is engrained in our legal system, and—surprise—found SYG to be racist.

Furthermore, it is based on a Tampa Bay Times examination of 237 Florida cases over 10 years. Branca examined those cases and found that SYG was applicable in only 56 of them. As A1F.org has previously reported, the Times’ own reporter has warned that its study was already too small to be conclusive. 

Recent political surveys indicate that the American public as a whole is strongly in favor of the right to bear arms—and may punish anti-gun candidates in the elections. A Gallup poll revealed that 56 percent of Americans think the nation would be safer if more people carried legal concealed firearms. In line with that finding, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed that 52 percent of Americans think the Democratic Party—all of whose viable presidential candidates are strongly anti-gun—are “outside the mainstream” on gun issues.

Will candidates’ opposition to gun rights cost them the election? Perhaps: Gallup also indicated that 26 percent of Americans will only vote for a candidate who shares their views on guns, while 54 percent see gun rights as one out of several important issues. It remains to be seen whether a shared commitment to gun control will sink the Democratic ship.