{"id":62911,"date":"2015-11-23T09:00:59","date_gmt":"2015-11-23T14:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=62911"},"modified":"2015-11-22T18:13:14","modified_gmt":"2015-11-22T23:13:14","slug":"the-economist-explains-why-america-doesnt-have-universal-background-checks-for-gun-buyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=62911","title":{"rendered":"The Economist explains; Why America doesn\u2019t have universal background checks for gun-buyers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Economist attempts to disarm Americans with their article “The Economist explains; Why America doesn\u2019t have universal background checks for gun-buyers<\/a>” which is riddled with errors of fact and misstatements as it explains the issue to a largely European audience;<\/p>\n

The police bosses are on the president\u2019s side. Their job would be much easier if fewer guns were in circulation and if all buyers of guns were to undergo checks of their background, especially their criminal and mental-health history. The proliferation of guns is one of the reasons for the substantial rise in violent crime in many American cities this year, they say. Current rules on background checks apply only to licensed gun dealers but up to 40% of gun sales take place at gun fairs or over the internet, which do not require such checks. The American public is overwhelmingly on the president\u2019s side too. According to a poll published in August by the Pew Research Centre, 85% of those surveyed are in favour of expanded background checks for gun owners. Almost 80% support laws to prevent people with a mental illness from buying a gun and 70% back the creation of a federal database to track all gun sales. So why is there still no federal law on background checks?<\/p>\n

The politically powerful National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups oppose universal background checks or indeed any law that could restrict gun sales. They invoke the Second Amendment of 1791, which protects \u201cthe right of the people to keep and bear arms\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Economist misses the fact that many police chiefs and sheriffs are urging law-abiding Americans to arm themselves because the police are no longer able to protect their constituencies, mostly because of criminals with guns who don’t obey the laws, who don’t bother with background checks at their own points of sale.<\/p>\n

That “40% of gun sales take place at gun fairs or over the internet” is an old statistic – pre-Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993. The Brady Bill requires background checks and it forbids sales of firearms to people who are flagged on the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS. Section 922(g) of the Brady Bill prohibits sales of firearms to any person who has been convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year; is a fugitive from justice; is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance; has been adjudicated as a mental defective or committed to a mental institution; is an alien illegally or unlawfully in the United States; has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions; having been a citizen of the United States, has renounced U.S. citizenship;
\nis subject to a court order that restrains the person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of such intimate partner, or; has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.<\/p>\n

The FBI asked folks who have been arrested and imprisoned for using a firearm in commission of their crimes and found that less than 1% got their firearms at gun shows or on the internet. Mostly they get their guns by trading between each other and stealing them from legal gun owners – including stealing weapons from legitimate gun dealers.<\/p>\n

Tracking gun sales is a good idea, except when you realize that police almost never check gun registration records when they’re investigating a crime. The police in the District of Columbia don’t even check their records of less than a 100 registered gun owners when a gun crime in the District is committed to look for suspects. Law abiding gun owners aren’t committing crimes. Tracking legal gun sales isn’t a solution to the gun crime problem. Registering guns only does one thing for government – it tells the government who owns the guns and where to go when it’s illegal to own guns for confiscation. It’s not a crime fighting tool.<\/p>\n

the National Rifle Association is powerful and they do oppose further restrictions to gun ownership, they also represent a large number (about 6 million) of little guys who wouldn’t be able to oppose the gun grabbers in government without the association. The fact is that there are sufficient laws on the books to prevent criminals from getting guns legally, but the government isn’t enforcing those laws, or they aren’t using the tools available to their full effect. it’s just easier to write more laws than it is to enforce the ones already written. That’s what legislators, in conjunction with a disingenuous media, do best – scare the public into believing there is a problem that they can solve by writing more laws.<\/p>\n

The Economist doesn’t include the most important part of the Second Amendment when they quote it; the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed<\/strong>“.<\/p>\n

The United States does have universal background checks, Economist, you should do your research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Economist attempts to disarm Americans with their article “The Economist explains; Why America doesn\u2019t have … The Economist explains; Why America doesn\u2019t have universal background checks for gun-buyers<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40472,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[82,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gun-grabbing-fascists","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/40472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}