Since the early 90’s gun background checks have denied about 2 million sales to people not allowed to own the weapons. Such checks only cover a minority of all gun purchases. So why not expand this process to cover more people? Why don’t members of the U.S. Senate care about preventing felons from purchasing guns? What part of the second amendment is being protected by not taking a peak to see if someone committed an armed robbery in the past?
Fuck you, NRA. And double fuck you, Senate.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Guns, Thought of the day |
For the Sake of Science 
I have no problem with universal background checks, but your numbers are garbage. 2 million sales were initially denied, but only a small minority of those 2 million ended up actually stopping a sale, most being mistakes or other errors. Still I’m sure many were stopped, so I’m not opposed.
I am opposed to expanding them while doing nothing to fix the system. Even just fixing some of the problems with the system as it is now and expanding nothing would have a greater impact than a simple expansion.
You can rightly complain about the lack of research into the matter, but the only study giving insight into the number of sales without checks is elderly at best and rife with methodological issues in the first place. Given that there are no recent studies, and no way to even tell how many guns are sold person to person, concluding that a minority of sales are subject to checks is just lazy.
I’ll try to be more diligent with commenting and responding to replies, but no promises. I’m a busy guy. Your mother won’t service herself you know, far too rotund for that.
I’m never going to understand this opposition to expanding gun sales to felons because it will be a minor inconvenience to other people. Nor will I ever understand why we can’t improve X unless we also improve A, B, C, D, E, F, and so forth.
One thing we could do to help with the research is give the ATF its balls back, allowing it to inquire into gun inventory and the like. It’d be good to start with removing the Senator(s) who gutted the usefulness of the agency for the sake of campaign donations from the NRA and its supporters.
It’d also be nice to see the NRA go away, what with what a moronic organization it is.
I think you misunderstand my opposition. I don’t think we would gain much from expanding background checks universally, I think we would gain far more by fixing the problems with the system we have now, I’d be happy to do both. I just think that if you expand the checks without fixing the problems, you use up what will there is to do anything.
Expanding checks without fixing the larger problem, the fact that they check basically nothing in many cases, is something like hanging a new chandelier in a haunted house, that’s why I say that it would have been nice to see expanded checks held hostage to try and force action on the much bigger problem. Sure, it makes it look somewhat better, but it’s still a damned haunted house.
Another thing I supported was exempting those with a concealed weapons permit from the background checks. Without exception, the regular checks they go through are much better than the check imposed to buy a gun, so not bothering with them, some 5 million people across the country, would have freed up a lot of resources that could be put to better use.
Every 4 years they do a real background check on me, rather than just running my name to see if I am on a poorly composed list of felons and such, which never happens again after you buy a gun unless you try to buy another, where a denial, even if upheld, doesn’t result in the confiscation of the arms you already own. The list of problems is as much about the misuse of resources as it is about anything else.