ACP45 Loc: Rhode Island

Since 2013, there have been nearly 300 school shootings in America — an average of about one a week. https://everytownresearch.org/school-shootings/

Like most things in life, there is usually not one simple answer to a complicated problem. https://mic.com/articles/27309/6-biggest-problems-with-mandatory-gun-background-checks#.o1u4dtAS4

One of the ideas proposed with the new gun control legislation is mandatory "universal" background checks required for all gun sales. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) is the database checked during gun purchases to ensure individuals such as felons and the mentally ill aren't allowed to purchase guns. In theory, requiring a check for each firearm purchase would clamp down on guns getting into the wrong hands.

There are a few problems with this idea. The system is woefully inadequate, underfunded, lacking in up-to-date or accurate state-reported felony and mental illness data, and doesn't address the core root problem of criminals getting guns via illegal trafficking or straw man purchases.

1. NICS, the background check system, is not fully funded:

During the Obama administration, Congress has failed to provide the necessary funding for NICS. Despite Congress passing the NICS Improvement Amendments Act in 2007, many states have made little or no progress reporting felony and mental illness data to NICS. This is largely because Congress has not fully funded NICS or provided correct incentives for states to do so. Congress actually appropriated just 5.3% of the total authorized amount in fiscal years 2009, 2010, and 2011.

2. Many states do not report data to NICS:

Many states do not report, or grossly under-report, felony and mental health information to NICS. In fact, 19 states have provided fewer than 100 records of individuals disqualified on mental health grounds since the implementation of NICS in the early 1990s. For instance, Maryland has only submitted 58 mental health records to the NICS database since 1999. Failing to report this data has allowed several mentally ill people to commit mass shooting murders, such as the shooters at both Arizona and Aurora, Colorado.

3. The Justice Department doesn't prosecute background check fraud:

The Obama administration's Justice Department is also not strongly enforcing prosecutions of people who falsify information on their gun background checks. The FBI reported 71,000 instances of people lying on their background checks to buy guns in 2009, but the Justice Department prosecuted a mere 77 cases, or a fraction of 1%.

4. NICS doesn't address illegal gun trafficking:

Advocating universal background checks may leave the uninformed with the impression that this measure would solve the issue of criminals obtaining guns; it doesn't. According to a 2001 Department of Justice study, 78.8% of criminals get their guns from sources outside of retail store purchases. 39.6% get guns from friends or family while another 39.2% get guns from the street or other illegal means. Universal background checks don't address illegal trafficking.

Trafficking has been a huge problem in Australia and in the UK since their respective gun bans. Here in the United States, we have serious issues with border security. The FBI states gangs - which boast 1.2 million active members as of 2011 - engage in illegal guns trafficking, as well as narcotics. Universal background checks for purchases could easily be circumvented through illegal trafficking. This is not to say that legal purchases shouldn't have a check, but to demonstrate that this measure doesn't solve illegal gun possession.

5. Universal checks don't satisfactorily address straw man purchases:

Another issue unaddressed by universal background checks is the straw man purchase, the act of illegally acquiring a firearm through a third party. The ATF defines straw man as using another person to acquire a firearm when the end user is specifically prohibited from acquiring the firearm. "That is to say, the actual purchaser is a felon or is within one of the other prohibited categories of persons who may not lawfully acquire firearms." The straw purchaser violates federal law by making false statements on Form 4473.

Criminals could circumvent universal checks by having another person with a "clean" record purchase the gun for them. This is already illegal, but that doesn't stop it. Criminals could also borrow, buy, or otherwise take illegal possession of a gun, even if the gun wasn't originally purchased with straw man intent. There is no logical, credible reason why universal checks would be any more effective in stopping either already illegal activity. Combine this with the fact the Justice Department doesn't prosecute referred fraud cases, and it's a loser solution to stopping guns from getting into the the wrong hands.

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The NRA has been very vocal in it's efforts to call attention to the deficiencies in our current system of mandatory gun background checks. Don/t you think it is time to hold our government leaders accountable for their failure to get such a simple thing as background checks right? Is it plain incompetence or is it something more sinister.... Problem, Reaction, Solution?

CDM Loc: Florida

This post is an excellent reference for those of us who support sensible gun control and know that gun bans of any kind don't work as a stand alone cure. Most egregious is those 'bans' authored by L*****t Democrats in the United States having nothing to do with prevention of mayhem by determined psychopaths but only to do with abolishing the 2nd amendment. And there in, I believe, resides our Achilles Heel.

Barack Obama loved to run his mouth about the Australia model … confiscation under the guise of (mandatory) buy-back ... What the boy wonder and every L*****t control fanatic fails to understand is Australia is only 20 million people (the population of Florida) and socialist; a very low pressure societal environment and hence mostly peaceful to start with. The other factor L*****t choose to ignore is the violent underground market that has been created. Just as with Prohibition when a vacuum is created by banning something, someone will come along to fill it, generally a violent criminal element, and a ready market will buy it. And, as a matter of interest, the people who created the Australian scheme are on record that it won't work in the U.S.

The United States is 320 million people of highly diverse ethnicities, religions and cultures. How does one begin, logically, much less honestly to compare that to any other nation on earth and then pretend to apply fixes and cures to societal foibles because they 'worked' in an unrelated environment? Only a L*****t can manage that.

Importantly you expose the overriding question here; when will we demand that our government actually take the actions necessary to devise and finance a proper 'control' system suitable to our social and behavioral model? In my humble opinion, and in consideration of the paragraph from Behold The Pale Horse, never, so long as L*****ts continue violent intimidation, holding the entire nation hostage to their agenda to destroy the constitution bit by bit.

While I do not believe the majority of rank and file L*****ts in this country are consciously (emphasis added) part of a conspiracy to keep the anti-gun movement stoked, I do believe that, at the top levels of Leftism in this country the intent is clear … the violence is necessary to feed the cause and invigorate the ignorant if not openly bovine Proletariat (the rank and file) to protest. Nothing like a good ol' mass shooting to get the kids fired up; as we see today.

Taking the mass murder out of the equation would be akin to taking r****m away from the L*****ts. These are not 'problems' they want solved until such time as other objectives have been achieved.

Thanks for the fine post.

bahmer

Amen and Amen

Alicia Loc: NYC

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I believe the problem could be solved by registering every gun. This registration must accompany the gun in the sale. Should the gun be used illegally, the last owner will be held responsible for the infraction;wh**ever it is. Just like with cars, the registration must be signed over by both parties. This would make the seller a bit more responsible. This should even go when the gun is given as a gift.

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

Registration of firearms has always been the key to confiscation. No nation has forced its citizens to register their firearms without eventually taking them away.

bahmer

Amen and Amen

CDM Loc: Florida

Registration is an age old argument but one always worth debating. To gain some insight I suggest you study the Canadian gun registration program and please bear in mind Canada is only 30 million total population with only about 10 million (known) weapons in private ownership.

You say every gun. I cannot envision how to administer the registration and tracking of 300 million of anything, guns or otherwise in a private, well organized environment. To accomplish it in a government bureaucracy is cosmically beyond my limited ability to comprehend. To be reasonable even if we reduce this to every gun purchased after some date in the near future the numbers are staggering and the problems sited below exist regardless of numbers.

There is the requirement for policing, enforcement and punishment. This facet boggles the mind long before one considers the tens of millions of weapons that will simply not appear in the system because the owners will flatly refuse to comply, aggravated by the existence of weapons that have no record to trace, hand-me-downs, i******s, collectibles, old and long forgotten, etc ... millions of weapons all of course capable of k*****g.

Probably the most egregious unintended consequence of what is certainly perceived as punishing the entire population for the infractions of a few ... is the huge underground or black market that will surely blossom and flourish in firearms that can't be traced. The true criminal element will not pass up this opportunity to gain illicit wealth. This put's huge pressure on an already impossibly overwhelmed policing and enforcement arm.

Finally, I suppose for some the cost of this whole thing would be a consideration. I realize for L*****ts generally, expansion of government and it's attendant costs are secondary to the perceived benefits of bureaucratic oversight. That said, I suspect even the most ardent L*****t will feel the pain of the costs associated with such an undertaking. And most importantly;

In the end, will this prevent the determined psychopath from doing his or her mayhem?

Now, just for the sake of discussion I would like to pose a scenario and question that addresses your suggestion "Should the gun be used illegally, the last owner will be held responsible for the infraction;wh**ever it is." The scenario; my guns are in my home in a very expensive gun safe bolted to the floor and for which only myself and my wife have the combination. All the guns have trigger locks on them even while in the safe. So, while I'm away for the weekend people break into my home and steal the entire safe (this does happen by the way). Sometime later one of my weapons is used in a mass shooting at say, a workplace. 10 people are k**led.

Am I, as the last owner of record, having complied with your envisioned registration requirement, guilty of murder?

Hemiman Loc: Communist California

I don’t think so because there is a precedent,the car.This scenario happens with autos all the time and the registered owner is not held responsible for the crimes committed if the car is stolen.

CDM Loc: Florida

I hear you and agree. In a number of states today there are proposals and/or discussion about holding car owners to some degree of responsibility if the car left unlocked and is stolen and involved in a crime particularly vehicular homicide. As happens frequently there is a gun in the (stolen) car (this happens a ton in Louisiana) and it's subsequently used in a crime so the same question applies to the gun. Don't know if anything will come of it but it is on the radar.

I strongly suspect in light of the fact that L*****ts view everything literally, what Alicia proposes while certainly precedent setting, mandates that the owner from whom the gun was stolen share, to some degree, responsibility for the crime, literally. That is what her words say. I am also aware that a number of Democrat officials have suggested this, over the years, as part of comprehensive gun control legislation.

Anyway, maybe Alicia will weigh in and say how she sees it working...

badbob85037

There are over 2,500 gun 'laws' on the books now. If you believe the Constitution is the "Supreme Law of the Land", it is what all laws and people must abide by. Any law that goes against that document isn't a law and should not be obeyed. The politician who wrote the unlawful 'law' will be removed from office and tried for his failure to obey his oath, his office, and the Constitution.That includes everyone v****g for the law That is our right and duty. If 500 showed up in DC to do their duty. I bet it would grow to 1,000 by this after noon. Then the military would jump in and we would have these worthless bunch of sodomites surrounded in their chambers. pissin their draws in fear. No more bat crazy pelosi or waters or the Jew hating Jew, Schumer. No more McCain on TV every Sunday wanting to go to war on some small none nuclear nation to please his master, the military congressional industrial complex. By Monday we'll have replaced every one of them. DC jails would be over crowded and hemp rope in growing demand. We wouldn't have our every phone call recorded to use against us at a later date, Our e-mail wouldn't be cataloged. Social media would be purged of government snitches and b***hes. Not only would we start enjoying what were once our basic rights but ones we didn't even know we had. I would think it would be better if they were left to rot from their tree as a warning to anyone wanting to take their place.

The Second Amendment is the number one issue when I v**e As when it falls they all fall. All stats make everything these disarming democrats, Republicans, and back stabbing Trump say crap. Do you think Trump or any of those criminals in Congress has ever used a bump stock or even seen one used? Anybody remember ceramic bullets. Totally useless No velocity, no coefficiency. The guy who made them got a rummer going these rounds were what Sarah Brady would call cop k*****g bullets. These gun grabbing i***ts in DC already had a bill going to ban these worthless bullets. California has ban bayonets. Has anyone ever seen or heard about any drive by bayonettings? Teflon Bullets banned not because the Teflon makes them armor piercing . No the steel makes then armor piercing but we now tear up our barrels not able to use Teflon. Nothing changes, i***ts passing lawless laws on s**t they know nothing about. 500 would be a good start.