As I discussed in a previous post, because Holocaust Museum shooter James von Brunn was a convicted felon, he was not allowed to buy or possess firearms.

But once again, the gun laws failed utterly. Apparently von Brunn was so busy plotting murder that he never stop to consider the gun laws he was violating.

When I read that the gun he used was an old .22 rifle, it occurred to me that gun owners could at least be relieved that it wasn't a Kalashnikov, and that this incident would not be invoked as justification for the "Assault Weapons Ban" or most of the usual gun control talking points.

My relief proved short lived, however, when I saw a CNN piece which invokes another popular cun control narrative -- so-called "gun tracing":

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- It is not possible for authorities to trace the rifle used in this week's shooting at the Holocaust Memorial Museum to the original purchaser, a law enforcement source said Friday.

The source, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation, said the weapon is a Winchester Model 6, .22 caliber rifle -- a type of gun manufactured between 1908 and 1928 -- long before records were kept on gun purchases.

Authorities also were checking to see if the weapon had been used in any other crime, the source said.

So what?

Does anyone think that being able to "trace" the original purchaser of a 1920s era weapon would be in any way helpful in this case? Obviously, it was manufactured by Winchester and sold to a buyer who is almost certainly long deceased. How would the identity of whoever that was aid the investigation?

What might matter would be the identity of the last transferor of the gun because it would have been an illegal transfer. But the age of the gun (and the inability to trace its first purchaser) has nothing to do with the modern federal sales report forms, which are required under more recent gun laws which von Brunn did not obey. Except for antique firearms (which this gun is not) for modern transfer purposes this gun is treated the same as a gun made last year. Whoever sells or transfers it is required to obey the law against sales to felons, and any dealer would have to have made von Brunn fill out the federal form. Obviously, the law was violated -- most likely by the previous owner, and certainly by von Brunn once he illegally possessed the gun.

If you read CNN's article and didn't know any better, you might think that old guns are exempt from sales reporting because of their age, and that there's another "loophole" we need to close. Nonsense. As a collector of old guns, I have had to fill out this form each time I've bought one, and the same law would apply if I sold it. Original purchasers are irrelevant.

Obviously, there would be no recent sales records in the case of von Brunn's .22, because he could not have bought it legally. This was not because of any "tracing loophole" in the law, but because one or more laws was violated by this convicted criminal and/or his accomplices.

No surprise there. Since when do criminals obey laws?