As Allahpundit pointed out earlier, AOC took a weird turn down a dark road when Rep. Crenshaw suggested he would loan a gun to a friend. “The people you’re giving a gun to have likely abused their spouse or have a violent criminal record,” she wrote. And then she demanded to know why Crenshaw would hand his domestic-abuser-friend a gun. Crenshaw replied that it was offensive to suggest his friends couldn’t pass a background check and added that in “America outside NYC” people lend their guns to friends for hunting or protection. AOC then doubled-down:

Herein lies an important point abt domestic abuse: most of it is hidden. You could know an abuser & have no clue.

I’ve had friends come out to me as victims. It’s not obvious. Unsafe relationships are COMMON.

That’s why House Dems passed closing the boyfriend loophole in VAWA.

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

To be clear, Crenshaw wasn’t saying his friends couldn’t pass a background check. He was saying that the law would put up a public barrier to a private decision. AOC is intentionally misconstruing his point to justify her response. Adding “Try to keep up” is a nice touch of arrogance when you’re lying about what someone said.

But that still wasn’t the end of it. Author Emily Miller, who has written a book about gun ownership, expressed support for Rep. Crenshaw and then argued that loaning a gun to a friend wasn’t irresponsible because you would know your friends. AOC jumped in again on her response to claim that anyone you know could be a secret domestic abuser:

This idea of “I know the guy, there’s no way he beats his wife” as the way we keep guns out of the hands of abusers is ridiculous.

Any person who has been abused, assaulted, etc knows that abusers often present as “upstanding.”

There’s no way you’d know. That’s why it’s common. https://t.co/uuq17HT3Of

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

Emily Miller pointed out she knows something about that:

Your assumption about me is wrong. I've been both abused and sexually assaulted. That's why I have a gun. Self defense. And I would loan my gun to any of my close girlfriends who needed it for their self defense.

— Emily Miller (@emilymiller) September 4, 2019

But it wasn’t even a bump in the road for AOC. Standard operating procedure for AOC on Twitter is to always be lecturing. She knows more than you about everything, even your own close friends (who are actually horrible people it turns out).

Domestic abusers can be master manipulators. Plus, domestic abuse is a HUGE indicator for gun violence.

That’s why “vouching for friend” isn’t a substitute for a background check.

You wouldn’t lend a car to someone w/o a license.Why lend a gun to someone w/o a background check?

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

There are several distinct ways in which this argument is dumb. For one thing, the only way a background check would prevent you from loaning a gun to a secret abuser/rapist is if the secret abuser already had a conviction for domestic abuse or rape. But if the abuse is truly hidden from everyone by a master manipulator then the background check would find nothing.

Secondly, the comparison to a driver’s license is silly. Bank robbers can have a driver’s license like everyone else. Independently, having a license is no guarantee someone isn’t planning a heist or worse, some sort of ISIS-inspired truck attack. But if my friend wanted to borrow my mini-van, I wouldn’t run a background check to see if he’d ever been a getaway driver or was on a terror watchlist. I guess it’s possible he could be secretly plotting evil deeds, but it’s more likely he just wants to pick up some lumber at Home Depot.

So what have we learned here? We’ve learned that all of our friends might actually be rapists and we won’t know unless we check a government database. Also, we’ve learned that there is nothing AOC can say, not matter how dumb or insulting, that 15,000+ of her fans won’t hit the like button.