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Pawlenty Isn’t Concerned That Al Qaeda Trying To Exploit Lax U.S. Gun Laws

Any individual in this country, regardless of criminal history, can go to a gun show and buy a firearm because law does not require private dealers to conduct a federal criminal background check on the buyer. This is exactly what American-born al Qaeda spokesperson Adam Yahiye Gadahn urged the terrorist group’s followers to do last week in a YouTube video and to use them to murder Americans.

GOP presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty weighed in on the issue yesterday at the Shooting Sports Summit in Louisville, Kentucky. When local news station WHAS11 asked Pawlenty specifically about the al Qaeda video, the former Minnesota governor said he does not support putting any new gun control laws on the books:

WHAS11: Does that concern you at all? And does that change at all our stance on the accesability of firearms?

PAWLENTY: I’m a strong supporter of the Second Amendment It says what it says, which is we should have the right to keep and bear arms. […] As they take airplanes and kill 3,000 of our fellow citizens and some are trying to get weapons of mass destruction, I think that’s where the main focus for us should be, not whether they get handguns and of course we need to have appropriate laws for that as well. … I’m not proposing new restrictions on firearms in America.

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Watch WHAS11’s report:

http://www.whas11.com/v/?i=123581099

While Pawlenty seems to be happy to give what he appears to think is the NRA line on the al Qaeda gun show loophole video, the powerful gun lobby isn’t talking. ThinkProgress has repeatedly asked the National Rifle Association to comment on the video, but we have yet to receive a response.