You’ve heard the line before from the left: Why can’t we just get together on “common sense” gun laws?
Now, of course, “common sense” in the left’s parlance means something like: “Now, if we squint a bit, so that we don’t see the ‘shall not be infringed’ part of the Second Amendment, or pretend it doesn’t stop there, then we can do all sorts of things, like banning scary-looking guns, or limiting the number of bullets in each magazine to two-and-a-half, or …”
But, this week, we got a reminder that we have “common sense” gun laws already — and they may have prevented a genuine tragedy in Boulder, Colorado.
At least 12 people were injured after a man identified by law enforcement as 45-year-old Egyptian national Mohamed Sabry Soliman used Molotov cocktails and a flamethrower against Jewish protesters demanding Hamas return Israeli hostages. (Or, to use NBC News’ pretzel-like euphemism for them, “Gaza-hostage-awareness marchers.”)
Now, there were a whole lot of other “common sense” precautions that weren’t taken in Soliman’s case. He was an Egyptian national denied a visa in 2005 but who arrived and overstayed a tourist visa under Joe Biden’s administration in 2022. He was given a work permit despite the overstay, CNN reported.
And, for the last year of that overstay, CNN reported Monday, he’d been planning the attack on “Zionists.” From their report:
That plot culminated on Sunday, when the 45-year-old Egyptian national left an iPhone with messages to his wife and five children in his house, drove to downtown Boulder with a homemade flamethrower and Molotov cocktails and attacked demonstrators at a peaceful Jewish event to support hostages in Gaza, according to federal hate crime charging documents.
Twelve people were injured in the attack, during which Soliman yelled “Free Palestine,” according to the FBI. He later told authorities that “he wanted to kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead,” an affidavit said.
Only one thing held Soliman back from attacking sooner, he told authorities: Waiting for his daughter to graduate high school.
Are there too many firearms restrictions in the United States?
However, buried in the article is something that stopped the attack from being far more deadly than it ended up being: those “common sense” gun laws that we already have.
As he began plotting an attack, Soliman told authorities, he researched how to make Molotov cocktails on YouTube. He also learned online about the group that eventually became his target — a weekly demonstration in Boulder urging Hamas to return the remaining hostages from Gaza.
Soliman said he took a concealed-carry class and learned to shoot a gun but as a non-citizen was blocked from purchasing a gun, so he turned to Molotov cocktails, according to a state affidavit. [Emphasis ours.]
That’s right: It turns out there are gun laws that work, even when other red flags were missed.
For instance, while he was given a work permit by the U.S. government despite being denied a visa in 2005, it wasn’t difficult to find reasons why he should have been on the next plane back to Egypt.
CNN didn’t take but a day to find an account matching his name and birthdate on Facebook, which contained disturbing material in praise of extremist groups:
Posts on the Facebook page expressed support for the Muslim Brotherhood protests against the removal of [former Egyptian President Mohamed] Morsi. One post from August 2013 featured a four-finger salute with a yellow background, a symbol supportive of the Rabaa al-Adawiya Square encampment, which was violently dispersed by Egyptian security forces loyal to Egypt’s then-defense minister and current president, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Morsi, the winner of the first post-Hosni Mubarak elections held in the country, won mostly because the only people who organized during the violent, repressive Mubarak regime were either incredibly brave or incredibly nuts.
Morsi was decidedly the latter: a frothing-at-the-mouth Islamist who was removed in 2013 after massive protests against his theocratic authoritarianism just one year into his reign. (He would die in 2019 after suffering a heart attack during a court hearing.)
Apparently, that very salient fact was overlooked — somewhat problematic, since Soliman told law enforcement he was motivated to plan the attack because “he wanted to kill all Zionist people and wished they were all dead” and he “hated the Zionist group and did this because he hated this group and needed to stop them from taking over ‘our land,’ which he explained to be Palestine,” a law enforcement affidavit said.
So, even after missing these red flags — and I doubtlessly expect we’ll find others during the investigation — and not enforcing immigration law in this case, he’s only charged with attempted murder, not murder. Why? Because we have gun laws that work to prevent massacres when we know there’s a high risk, like a non-citizen buyer.
And, to be quite blunt, Coloradans would have been safer with a few more concealed carriers in deep-blue Boulder on Sunday to stop the alleged attacker.
Maybe now, law-abiding citizens will realize why the right to self-defense “shall not be infringed” and get permits and training of their own. Just saying.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
