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.