Mark Kelly, the celebrity poster child used by Colorado Democrats to testify on behalf of universal background checks, where he lied about the number of guns bought in Colorado without one, had his recent straw purchase of an AR-15-style “assault” weapon rescinded by the Tucson, Arizona gun store that sold it to him.

Kelly decided to buy the gun on a whim after passing a background check to somehow prove a point about how easy it is for law-abiding citizens to attain such guns. But after announcing to the media it was all a stunt and he was planning on turning the gun over to the police, the gun store owner has decided to cancel the purchase, as Kelly was not being honest about buying it for personal purposes.

Reports Fox News on the store owner’s decision:

“While I support and respect Mark Kelly’s 2nd Amendment rights to purchase, possess, and use firearms in a safe and responsible manner, his recent statements to the media made it clear that his intent in purchasing the Sig Sauer M400 5.56mm rifle from us was for reasons other then for his personal use,” MacKinlay said in the statement.

He added that the store will return Kelly’s money, donate the rifle to the Arizona Tactical Officers Association to be raffled as a fundraiser and make an additional contribution of $1,295 — the value of the rifle — to the Eddie Eagle GunSafe Program.

Kelly, husband of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, testified at the Colorado Legislature a day before this stunt gone wrong. There he used a false statistic about background checks that 9News apologized for airing — not to mention the fact that his wife’s shooter passed a background check.

The point of Kelly testifying was to use his tragic circumstance to politicize the issue and imply that the universal background check bill would stop future mass shootings like his wife’s — which it wouldn’t. It’s the “new McCarthyism.”

Using tragic circumstances over facts in the gun control debate unfortunately became the norm during this year’s session. Between Rep. Rhonda Fields sponsoring legislation she couldn’t even answer simple questions about to 9News and Mark Kelly’s false testimony, emotion won out over fact, time and again.