As I write this, the right side of political Twitter is eagerly awaiting her clarification of the tweet below. She can’t mean to imply what it seems like she’s implying, can she?

I don’t think so. Whatever dark views AOC and her fellow travelers in the DSA might hold about the kind of people who serve in America’s military, they’re smart enough not to air those views at a moment when they’re trying to break into the political mainstream.

This is probably a product of simple dimwittery. She lost her comms person recently, remember. We can’t expect her to communicate effectively on her own.

Situations like this story are why we protect the 2nd Amendment.

Side note: With universal background checks, I wouldn’t be able to let my friends borrow my handgun when they travel alone like this. We would make felons out of people just for defending themselves. https://t.co/x60mdd1WW1

— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) September 4, 2019

Obviously, what Crenshaw means when he says he wouldn’t be “able” to lend his friends guns under a UBC regime is that having to perform and pay for the check would make it enough of a hassle as not to be worth doing. Not that his friends would fail the background check.

But when you think of right-wingers generally and gun owners specifically as evil, naturally that might not occur to you. And so:

You are a member of Congress. Why are you “lending” guns to people unsupervised who can’t pass a basic background check?

The people you’re giving a gun to have likely abused their spouse or have a violent criminal record, & you may not know it.

Why on earth would you do that? https://t.co/TQFjcLQebO

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) September 4, 2019

What she means to say (I think?) is that people looking to borrow guns are more likely than the average person to fail a background check. That may be true in the aggregate: It stands to reason that a group that’s barred from purchasing weapons under the law is more apt to seek out other means, like loans from a friend, to get their hands on one. But by no means does that mean the average gun borrower is “likely,” i.e. more likely than not, to be a domestic abuser or convicted felon. I suspect most people who borrow guns do so for no more sinister reason than that their friend owns an interesting weapon that they want to test at the range and they don’t want to have to lay out hundreds or thousands of dollars to buy their own.

It’d be like me claiming that we’re “likely” to see a strong anti-military influence in American politics, replete with malicious insinuations about the criminal character of veterans, from the AOC wing of the Democratic Party. Would that be fair? I don’t think they’re likely, i.e. more likely than not, to go that route. But are they more likely than the average Democrat to do so? Oh, you betcha. Unquestionably.

Crenshaw didn’t care for the implication about his friends:

Just so I’m clear: you think my friends are domestic abusers/criminals? Seriously that’s your argument? That they can’t pass a background check?

Wrong. People lend guns to friends, esp if they don’t own a gun, for self-defense and hunting purposes.

This is America outside NYC. https://t.co/wkWPhfi0JB

— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) September 4, 2019

The background checks bill that’s circulating in the House does allow for gun lending but only in circumstances more limited than the one Crenshaw describes — you can lend a weapon to a friend if he’s going to the range or going hunting, if he’s physically in your presence at all times, or if the loan is urgently needed for protection in a life-threatening situation. Lending them a gun for general self-defense purposes while traveling wouldn’t be covered. The question Crenshaw will need to answer as this percolates in the media is what he proposes to do about the worst-case scenario imagined by Ocasio-Cortez, when a friend comes by asking to borrow a gun and then goes out and commits a crime with it. Assume that only later does the lender find out that his buddy was barred from purchasing a weapon due to a previous criminal conviction. What liability should a lender bear in that situation, when he’s *unwittingly* enabled a violent crime to occur that a UBC system might have prevented? (It’s already a crime to lend a gun to someone whom you know is prohibited from purchasing one.)