A prominent gun control group is encouraging Republicans in Washington to expand background checks on gun purchasers, seizing on recent news that the would-be-assassin of House Speaker John Boehner owned a loaded handgun.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said Tuesday that the arrest of Michael Robert Hoyt, a mentally disturbed bartender who admitted to having plotted to kill Boehner, should spur Congress to take action on gun control.
“Hopefully, the Republican Congress will heed this indictment of the Speaker’s would-be assassin as a wake-up call to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, including felons, fugitives, domestic abusers and the severely mentally ill,” the organization said in a statement. “In order to keep our kids and communities safe, the Republican Congress needs to finish the job by expanding Brady background checks to all gun sales.”
“But if the Republican Congress refuses to finish the job, then we’re prepared to expand the fight at the state level for gun violence prevention in order to build pressure on Capitol Hill,” the group added.
Federal background checks on firearms buyers, known sometimes as Brady background checks, were an integral part of the 1994 Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.
Boehner, for his part, accused the group of trying to use the situation to its political advantage.
“They’re trying to exploit this situation to get attention for their cause,” Boehner spokesman Michael Steel told The News, adding that the Speaker wasn’t interested in “assisting that effort.”
The Brady campaign’s statement came just a day after news emerged that Hoyt, a 44-year-old bartender at Boehner’s country club in Ohio, came forward to authorities with his plot to kill the Republican House Speaker.
Hoyt, who has a history of mental illness, told authorities in October that he was sorry he didn’t have time to put something in Boehner’s drink “after being fired from the Wetherington County Club a week earlier.”
“Hoyt told the officer he was Jesus Christ and he was going to kill Boehner because Boehner was mean to him at the country club and because Boehner is responsible for Ebola,” U.S. Capitol Police Special Agent Christopher M. Desrosiers said in the indictment.
According to the indictment, he went on to tell police that he had a loaded Beretta .380 automatic handgun and “was going to shoot Boehner and take off.”
Police seized an arsenal of weapons from his home, including an SKS assault rifle magazine, two boxes of 7.62 ammo, 35 loose rounds, a speed loader and a box of .380 rounds.
Hoyt was listed in the indictment as being held on a court ordered mental evaluation and treatment.
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