The issue of gun rights versus control has been in the spotlight for several years now, as a number of recent school shootings have grabbed the public’s attention. The mass media coverage of these shootings has even greater propelled the debate into the limelight.
On the contrary, gun violence in the U.S.A. has, in fact, decreased to half its amount of the early 1990s.
Still, many citizens support stricter gun laws and reforms, which I also support (yes, even gun-owners, particularly members of the NRA, support reforms on current gun laws). Select groups on the greater extremities of this issue are calling for either a significant loosening of government gun control or the outright ban of the right to bear arms.
However, it is a not a major modification of federal gun laws that will solve the problem of gun violence. Those who are committing these crimes are generally not the legal owners of the firearms used and would not pass a background check for purchasing a firearm (e.g. ex-criminals, seriously mentally disabled individuals, etc.).
For example, the shooter of the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting, Adam Lanza, was mentally ill and was not using his own firearms. The two pistols and assault rifle were his mother’s, and why his mother allowed her mentally ill child access to her firearms, we will never know.
Additionally in the Columbine Massacre, the two shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who were both mentally troubled individuals, illegally purchased the guns as minors from dealer Mark Manes — a primary example of ‘straw purchasing.’
Thirdly, the very recent school shooting at Marysville-Pilchuck High School in Washington committed by 15-year-old Jaylen Fryberg involved the use of a firearm that Fryberg obviously did not purchase (minors cannot purchase firearms) and, for some reason, had easy access to.
The answer to end gun violence is not a federally mandated ‘universal’ background check for all gun sales in America (as we can see in these three examples, a universal background check would not have prevented these shootings).
These wrongfully supported measures will only make it more difficult for the deserving gun-owners to purchase firearms in order to defend their lives and their families’ lives against the criminals who illegally and immorally acquire firearms to commit inhuman crimes. These measures will also make it burdensome for hunters and sport-shooters to rightfully acquire firearms.
Furthermore, gun-owners support reforms to the current gun laws but do not support a potential ‘universal’ background check. With a government administration that has deceived the public through a 2013 IRS scandal illegally targeting select groups or individuals and another unethical impropriety involving the National Security Agency (NSA) imposing a “massive illegal dragnet surveillance of domestic communications and communications records of millions of ordinary Americans” according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), legal deserving gun-owners cannot trust this administration to rightfully conduct a universal background check without using this federally administrated test to detrimentally restrict gun rights and transition to the ultimate extermination of the constitutional right to bear arms.
Gun-owners and gun rights supporters felt even more strongly about this view after hearing President Obama’s support of Australia’s excessively severe gun confiscation program, which has ripped the Australian citizens of their right to bear arms and has only granted this right to a very select few of individuals.
Moreover, a ‘universal’ background check will not keep firearms out of the hands of those who commit the crimes, school shootings and homicides.
Those who commit these atrocities, in the first place, do not acquire their weapons from direct purchase after passing the already-in-place background check to purchase firearms.
To solve the crisis of the atrocities of gun violence, the government must put more of an emphasis on restricting the power of the illegal arms trafficking market and eliminating the loopholes to the background checks.
To start, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) must be given more power to monitor and enforce the law upon the illegal market.
Currently, the ATF only has 1,800 agents monitoring 77,000 arms dealers, according to the National Gun Victims Action Council. Congress has also imposed laws making it difficult for the ATF to inspect arms dealers, to revoke licenses of corrupt arms dealers and to oversee the circulation of firearms in the U.S., as the ATF does not have access to the registration of all firearms in America.
Additionally, there are too many readily available loopholes in the currently mandated background checks, including sales at gun shows, private internet sales and ‘straw purchasing,’ which involves the private transfer, either legal or illegal, of firearms.
Sales at gun shows do not require a pre-purchase criminal background check and neither do private Internet sales. Considering gun shows, arms-purchasers should be required to pass a background check just like any purchaser who buys from a regular licensed dealer. Secondly, the sale of firearms over the Internet should be completely prohibited, as the Internet provides a massive loophole for criminals to acquire weapons with ease.
On a side note, placing a greater emphasis on the education of gun safety to the public and ramping up security measures at schools are necessary to start the decline of gun violence in the U.S.
The action to prevent detrimental gun violence must be an intensive effort to restrict the circulation of guns on the illegal arms trafficking market by giving the ATF more power and launching more rigorous investigations of the market to better enforce the law.
Additionally, the loopholes of current background checks (e.g. Internet sales, gun shows and straw purchasing) must be shut by eliminating Internet arms sales, requiring background checks and restricting the immediate purchase of firearms at gun shows and placing a greater focus on impeding the process of straw purchases.
America has a major problem with gun violence. Our leaders must break the congressional gridlock with compromise in order to put an end to this major national problem. As the gridlock continues, more innocent people will continue to die at the hands of criminals.
Maybe, just maybe, after the swap of power in Congress following the 2014 Midterm Elections, with the Republicans seizing power in the Senate, which gives the House of Representatives and the Senate both Republican majorities, the initial Congressional gridlock will be broken and reform will begin to process.
We can only hope a new gridlock between the Executive and Legislative branches will not form when the new state representatives take office in early January 2015. This potential multi-branch gridlock will create yet another hindrance to the progress of gun law reformation.
Ultimately, the highly likely break of the current Congressional gridlock in early 2015 will certainly lead to more legislative processes regarding gun-law reformation, giving Americans some hope to hold onto while watching this heated debate of gun rights and control unfold.
TyrannyOfEvilMen • Dec 14, 2014 at 7:36 AM
Background checks will not solve the problem, as your article clearly demonstrates, but despite this, you call for more and stronger background checks. The government is too Quick to misuse power as you correctly point out, yet despite this you call for giving the ATF more power.
As to straw purchases, the definition of a straw purchase is when someone who can legally purchase a firearm does so using his credentials to clear a background check when his intent is to give the firearm to someone who cannot clear the background check. A straw purchase is NOT when a 17-year-old is allowed to illegally purchase a firearm by an FFL. That is simply an illegal purchase.
I would propose an alternative solution to yours. We actually need LESS gun laws, not more. Allow Constitutional carry across all 50 states (including conceal carry) and remove all magazine restrictions. This would allow the law-abiding the freedom that is guaranteed to them in the constitution. As a free man, the government need not be concerned with what weapons I choose or how many rounds I feel are necessary to defend my loved ones in the event of a lethal force attack. It is simply none of their business.
On the criminal justice side, make one simple change to require that a violation of ANY gun laws be served consecutively and without the possibility of early parole when a person is convicted of using a firearm in a crime.
These two changes would do more to reduce “gun violence” than anything else and would maximize freedom for the law-abiding.
As for the ATF, they should be restricted to investigating issues related to interstate commerce. They should have absolutely no other role since the states are quite capable of passing laws to punish criminals and the Constitution clearly forbids the federal government from making laws that restrict the right of the people to keep and bear arms.
The only issue remaining then would be the most difficult: How to deal with the mentally ill? That is really the question that everyone should be focused on because everything covered above by comparison is easy. The leftists seem to want to create a network of laws to ensnare people who would seek any kind of professional help which of course will ultimately backfire as all leftist policies do. They seem to believe the creating some sort of Minority Report scenario is desirable or even possible.
As you might guess, I do not believe that any such scenario is either possible nor desirable. So again, I must side with personal freedom. Unless you have been adjudicated mentally ill in a court of law, there should be no restrictions on any of your constitutional rights. Even after adjudication, there must be provisions for periodic review. Anything else is abusive government power and cannot be tolerated by a free people.