Influential evangelical pastor Rick Warren has used Twitter as a space for public grieving in the days since his 27-year-old son Matthew killed himself, but a pointed revelation yesterday applies directly to the gun-control debate currently raging in Congress. “Someone on the internet sold Matthew an unregistered gun,” Warren wrote. “I pray he seeks God’s forgiveness. I forgive him.”
The sheriff’s department in Orange County is working to track the seller, the AP reports. “We can’t tell if it’s registered or not because the serial number is scratched off,” a spokesperson said. “At one point in time, it may have been, but it’s going to be impossible to find out.”
While it is already illegal to buy a gun without a background check in California, the current version of the Senate’s gun bill would expand background checks to cover gun shows and Internet purchases nationwide.
There are more gun deaths by suicide than homicide in the United States: In 2010, nearly 20,000 of the 30,000 deaths by firearm were suicides.
