"This amendment would have
criminalized certain private transfers of firearms between honest
citizens, requiring lifelong friends, neighbors and some family
members to get federal government permission to exercise a
fundamental right or face prosecution," NRA spokesman Chris Cox
said in a statement.
Yes, it would have criminalized private
transfers to friends and family who are convicted felons or severely
mentally ill. By the NRA spokesman's own words, they are against
criminalizing gun sales to convicted felons or the severely mentally
ill.
This is an organization with members
who have made our lawmakers addicted to bribery and threatened to
replace the bribery with attack ads against our lawmakers if they fail
to vote how the organization demands. That is terrorizing.
The Manchin-Toomey
amendment which the NRA
spoke out against would have closed the gun show loophole which an
al-Qaeda spokesperson told aspiring terrorists to exploit and excluded extending background checks to sales and transfers
between friends and family. The NRA protected terrorists by lying
about the amendment. The amendment even banned the creation of a
national firearm registry which fearmongers in Congress also lied about.
An Onion article
which claimed "Next Week's School Shooting Victims Thank Senate For Failing To Pass Gun Bill" is sadly, more true than fiction.
Why do people
support the NRA? Why do people continue to be members of it and why
do our lawmakers lack the courage to stand up to them? Frankly,
because people are still gullible enough to believe what the NRA says.
This failure happened
despite 74% of NRA members supporting some form of universal
background checks. More than that,
Americans overwhelmingly support expanding background checks.
Increasingly, the NRA has become an
organization which doesn't support the interest of its members.
"We think it's reasonable to
provide mandatory instant criminal background checks for every sale
at every gun show. No loopholes anywhere for anyone." - NRA ad from USA Today, 1999
Organizations change, just as political
groups do. It's disturbing how the NRA , which once attacked Bill
Clinton for being soft on crime, is now the one being soft on crime.They're now protecting the Second Amendment rights of thugs and terrorists by making people think what is reasonable is unreasonable and merely expanding what we're already doing is somehow bad. Heaven forbid, we should make something we're doing actually more efficient and effective.
Now, I have guns, I like to shoot guns
(I think it's fun), and I would use guns to defend my home against
intrusion (though statistically, it's more likely it will be involved
in a gun related accident than be used for defense). According to a
recent poll, about half the people in the US (44% of Republicans anyway) think an armed revolt may be
necessary soon. I'll gladly use my guns to defend this country
against those people; however, I don't think I'd need to as the US
military would have my back.
I certainly think everyone
shouldn't have a gun. The mentally unstable, violent felons on
parole, people convicted of domestic abuse with restraining orders
against them, raging alcoholics, and people I wouldn't trust with
sharp objects are on that list. This flies in the face of gun
fetishists and 2nd Amendment worshipers who feel preventing escaped
convicts or people in jail from buying a gun is infringing their 2nd
Amendment right. After all, at what point did they lose their
Constitutional rights? If the right "shall not be infringed" then it mustn't ever be infringed, right? Or maybe, these fetishists are just cherry
picking the words of the 2nd Amendment to match their own deranged
viewpoint.
I've already written elsewhere on the
need for a multi-prong approach to gun violence in this country. This isn't that article. This article
is about exposing NRA lies and background checks.
Background checks work. See the
below statistic.
"In 2010, nearly 80,000 Americans
were denied guns after providing false information about their
criminal histories during the background check."
Since the Brady Act was passed in 1994,
around 1.8 million gun sales have been denied to unqualified buyers.
There is no evidence that all the
individuals denied the legal sale of a gun acquire them elsewhere.
Despite what some say about how easy it is to get a gun, closing the
loopholes in legally buying guns would leave those who
can't get guns legally with the black market. Not all such
individuals know where the gun black market is or want to enter the
criminal underworld. Do you?
I recently watched The Courier. In one
scene, the courier (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) goes to his underworld friends to buy untraceable guns.
Everyone says how easy it is to get guns. However if I were to fail a
background a check, I don't know how to find my local criminal gun
dealer. Closing the background check loophole would be somewhat effective as others also don't know where to
find their local underworld contacts. Anyway, the movie was decent,
with some unfortunate usage of CGI blood.
In 1996, Australia introduced numerous gun regulations, including background checks, following a mass
shooting which killed 35. Prior to 1996, there were 13 mass shootings
in the previous 14 years. Following the new gun regulations, there
have been no mass shootings. Gun crime dramatically decreased (nearly
by 60%), gun suicides decreased by 65%, and overall homicides
decreased as well. In 2007, homicides decreased to the lowest number
on record. Now, some people may argue about those percentages so pay
attention to the important part: "No mass shootings." You can even watch John Oliver of the Daily Show confront someone claiming this was a failure.
However according to the most extreme
gun rights advocates who are the people who control the debate, it is
better for you, your friends, and children to die in gun violence
than for the 2nd Amendment to be infringed or for others to imagine
it is being infringed. They like to forget about the whole
"well-regulated" part of the Amendment. When those people
say that the 20 children who died in the Newtown shooting are just the
price we pay for the freedom to have guns, I say, "Then,
sacrifice yours first. Let me know if you feel the same afterwards."
If Americans can't be responsible about
the 2nd Amendment, then maybe we shouldn't even have it. Even our
Founding Fathers felt we shouldn't be restricted by our founding
documents as if they were written in stone. Thomas Jefferson felt we
should rewrite the Constitution every 7 years to keep it current with
the times. I actually enjoy 2nd Amendment freedoms; however, arguing
with "gun nuts" certainly makes me wonder about it. Those
so-called "law-abiding citizens" are as irresponsible and
dangerous as the criminals on the street. They certainly give
reasonable gun owners a bad name.
Let's put it this way. Nuclear arms are
"arms" so the 2nd Amendment gives an American the citizen
the right to have one (so argued one 2nd Amendment advocate to me).
Do we really support no background checks for "arms?" When
the Founding Fathers added the 2nd Amendment, an "arm" was
an inaccurate musket which could fire about once a minute. Trained
elite infantry could fire between 4 and 5 shots a minute. We already restrict the type of arms people can buy. We even draw the
line at certain types of guns which can fire fully automatic. I don't
hear many gun rights advocates raising a stink about the need to
repeal the fully automatic gun ban. See, they're OK with "infringements" just so long as it's the "infringements" they think are good. That's hypocrisy in action (inaction, actually).
How do criminals get guns?
Though the exact statistic is debated,
10-20% of gun crime is committed with legally obtained guns. Both the
Aurora theater shooter and Virginia Tech shooter passed background checks to get guns because their mentally ill status
wasn't reported.
That identifies flaws in our
information network that common sense says we should correct. One can
also legally buy guns without background checks by buying guns from
individuals at or outside of gun shows. Only high volume sellers need
to be licensed and conduct background checks. If closing these holes
in the background check system could prevent 10-20% of gun crime, only
the most negligent individual could argue against it. Forty-six Senators did just that and voted to let more Americans die in gun
crime. That should be considered accessory to homicide.
Obama said, "“The law already
requires licensed gun dealers to run background checks, and over the
last 14 years that’s kept 1.5 million of the wrong people from
getting their hands on a gun, but it’s hard to enforce that law,
when as many as 40 percent of all gun purchases are conducted without
a background check. That’s not safe. That’s not smart.”
The ATF says that the two biggest ways criminals get guns are straw purchases and legally-licensed (FFL)
corrupt dealers who don't conduct background checks. Stealing guns
isn't at the top of the list.
With those two methods, guns go to
criminals and the black market. Since September 13, 1994, over 23,775
guns have been reported lost, missing, or stolen from FFL dealers.
That's after a law was passed requiring dealers to report missing
guns within 48 hours. Several states also make straw purchases
extremely easy by not restricting the number of guns a non-FFL dealer
can purchase. Obviously, a citizen doesn't need to purchase 30 guns
in a single day in order to exercise 2nd Amendment rights. One person
can't "bear" that many arms or shoot that many guns at
once without some ridiculous contraption connecting a bunch of
triggers to a string. However, they can supply those guns to the
black market.
However, individuals who don't sell a
lot of guns per year don't need to get a FFL or conduct background
checks. Many normal citizens may, in fact, be participating in straw purchases and not realize it, such as anytime someone buys a gun for
someone else. By requiring everyone to conduct a background check on
a gun recipient, it both eliminates an easily exploitable hole in the
background check system and informs those gun sellers who may have
previously been unwitting accomplices in gun crime. Under current
law, you could buy 50 guns from a store, and go sell them in the
parking lot. It would only be a crime if you knowingly sell them to
people who are not legally permitted to have guns. That makes
prosecuting such sales to criminals almost impossible (just claim ignorance) and gives those
conducting straw purchase a great defense. Making it a crime to not
find out whether a gun sale is criminal would change that. Most
people don't want to be criminals, and most people don't want to
knowingly sell guns to a criminal.This is another simple reason why universal background checks would work.
However, the NRA lied about
universal background checks.
Obama slammed the National Rifle Association, declaring that the organization “willfully lied” about
the legislation’s effects. “They claimed that it would create
some sort of big brother gun registry even though the bill did the
opposite,” he said, adding “This legislation, in fact, outlawed
any registry, plain and simple, right there in the text. But that
didn’t matter. And unfortunately this pattern of spreading untruths
about this legislation served a purpose…Those lies upset an intense
minority of gun owners and that in turn intimidated a lot of
senators.”
Universal background checks could
easily work without a registry. The same infrastructure can be used
as with FFL dealers. Private sellers can go with the buyer to a FFL
to have the check done. Currently, FFL dealers keep background check
records for 20 years. This is already done. The records are kept safe
and private unless subpoenaed for a specific legal matter.
Some people soaked up the NRA propaganda and claimed that background checks violate the 2nd Amendment despite our Supreme Court having said otherwise. Universal background checks only make our current system more effective. They don't change what a background check is or the types of record kept. Once these individuals start claiming that we shouldn't deny guns to felons or the mentally ill, we can consider them taking a principled stand on their misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment rather than merely being people that believe anything they hear which reinforces their prejudices and biases.
Some people soaked up the NRA propaganda and claimed that background checks violate the 2nd Amendment despite our Supreme Court having said otherwise. Universal background checks only make our current system more effective. They don't change what a background check is or the types of record kept. Once these individuals start claiming that we shouldn't deny guns to felons or the mentally ill, we can consider them taking a principled stand on their misinterpretation of the 2nd Amendment rather than merely being people that believe anything they hear which reinforces their prejudices and biases.
Now that the current battle to pass gun
control legislation (even if only background checks that fall short
of truly universal) has died, where are the ignorant gun fetishists
calling for a repeal of all background checks? After all, don't they
infringe on the right of criminals and the mentally ill to have guns?
My guess is that they're too busy drooling on their own shoes while
waiting for the next round of propaganda to tell them what to do.
Meanwhile, some of the 46 lawmakers are enjoying their financial
contributions from the NRA while a criminal, somewhere, is using a
loophole to a buy gun that will be used to kill someone's child. No doubt, these are the same types of people who bought the ex-girlfriend target that bleeds when you shoot it (you got guns in my misogyny, you got misogyny in my guns!)
Who profits from the NRA's lies?
Gun manufacturers and sellers profit from the fear-mongering about gun control. Gun sales are up under
Obama and exploded during discussion of gun control legislation in
the Senate, due to the all the lies being told. Ammunition shortages
have even occurred.
Gun manufacturers would also have profit-driven reasons to oppose background checks. They'd lose
sales to both criminals and the mentally ill. A drop in crime may also
lead to less gun purchases by law-abiding citizens. I'm not saying
this is actually the case; however, it's where the money would be.
It certainly seems gun makers should be
happy when Democrats are elected as it lets people spread lies about guns
being taken in order to spur increased sales.
"Brian Rafn, a gun industry
analyst and director of research at Morgan Dempsey Capital
Management, said gun companies are going to have to figure out how to
remain profitable now that the "visceral political craziness is
removed from the equation."
It's a common claim that the NRA
represents gun manufacturers more than they do gun owners. Even Cracked, a humor website, waded into the argument on that,
backing up its researched article.
About 90% of gun owners don't belong to
the NRA.Of 50 million gun owners, only about
4.5 million belong to the NRA.
Since
background checks only infringe your 2nd Amendment rights if you're a
criminal, insane, or a terrorist, perhaps all the people opposing
background checks are either one or all of those things. Should we
really listen to them or give weight to their arguments? I say, "No."
Fortunately, not all gun rights group are like the NRA. Unfortunately, the NRA is the biggest and most powerful.
Fortunately, not all gun rights group are like the NRA. Unfortunately, the NRA is the biggest and most powerful.
Better gun regulation reduces suicides.
People intent on
killing themselves won't just find another means if their preferred
method is taken away.
"The Israeli Defense Forces,
much like American troops, was seeing a disturbing number of suicides
in the ranks in 2006. In an effort to bring down the numbers, the IDF
banned soldiers from bringing their rifles home with them on the
weekends. Suicides fell by 40 percent, according to a study by
Israeli psychiatrists."
"In the first half of the 20th
century, ovens in England used to burn coal gas, which happened to be
completely lethal in concentrated doses and was thus the preferred
way to commit suicide. By the late 1950s, sticking your head in the
oven accounted for nearly half of all suicides committed in England.
By the early 1970s, these ovens had been phased out, so nobody was
surprised to see coal gas fall out of the top ten British suicide
methods (one of Cracked.com's least popular recurring articles). So
what did all of those suicidal people do instead? In a startling
number of cases, they just went right on living. The suicide rate
dropped by a third, and it never went back up."
The laughably bad lies from those
who voted in support of more Americans being shot by guns
These are the traitors who voted to
keep loopholes open for terrorists and violent criminals.
Democrats: Max Baucus (MT); Mark Begich (AK); Heidi Heitkamp (ND); Mark Pryor (AR); Harry Reid (NV).
(Note: Harry Reid's "no" vote
was only procedural which permits him to bring it up again and didn't
represent opposition.)
Some of their choice lies are below:
“Having carefully reviewed the Manchin-Toomey legislation, unfortunately, I do not believe it would be effective in preventing the kind of heartbreaking loss of life seen in Newtown or in other recent tragic incidents. It does, however, contain several provisions that would make it more difficult for law-abiding Ohioans to exercise their constitutionally-guaranteed rights.
“I do believe there are actions Congress can and should take to reduce gun violence without infringing on Second Amendment rights, and I look forward to supporting such amendments.”
"This includes legislation that not only helps ensure those suffering from mental illness have access to the treatment they need, but also enforces and improves rules already on the books that limit their ability to threaten themselves and their communities. For instance, I will be supporting amendments to improve background checks by strengthening state reporting of individuals who courts have found to be mentally ill.”
Yes, Rob. Expanding background checks wouldn't have prevented the Newtown school shooting. Less than 20 people died there. Over 10,000 people die a year in America due to guns. As of April 17th, 3,531 were killed by guns in the USA. It seems to you that preventing some of those deaths aren't important.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2012/12/gun_death_tally_every_american_gun_death_since_newtown_sandy_hook_shooting.html
The fact is, there is no golden bullet to solve violence in America. Background checks are just part of a well-balanced approach. America has a culture of death.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/mass_violence_gun_control_and_the_american_culture_of_death_20130416/
** Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.):
“Gun control is a legitimate issue for our country to debate and decide where and how we can fix the problems of violence,” Paul said at a breakfast with reporters in Washington on Wednesday.
“Unfortunately, the effort to push through legislation that no one had read highlights one of the primary reasons we announced our intention to force a 60-vote threshold. We believe the abuse of the process is how the rights of Americans are systematically eroded and we will continue to do everything in our power to prevent it.”
One thing, people read it. Another thing, if less people had read it than Paul liked, they might have had a chance if he hadn't filibustered it. He also mocked the families of victims of the Newtown shooting who came to Washington by calling them props. So, he claims we can debate gun control while filibustering the chance to discuss it. With those disgusting remarks, he's making fans of those who believe the government is merely using gun violence victims as excuse to take away everyone guns. How does he sleep at night? No doubt very well and in comfort with taxpayer money from a well-paying position given to him by the disgusting and the gullible.
** Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.):
“In my view, we should focus on keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals and those with mental issues that could cause them to be a threat to our society,” McConnell said in a speech of the Senate floor. “The government should not punish or harass law-abiding citizens in the exercise of their Second Amendment rights.
“And it’s that focus, on protecting communities and preserving our constituents’ constitutional rights that will be my guide as I vote on amendments to this bill.”
So, he said we should keep guns out of the hands of criminals, but he voted against a bill to do that. As the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, McConnell truly is a piece of human filth and a big reason why nothing gets done. To him, dead Americans are a small price to pay for a political "win" for Republicans.
** Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.):
“Reducing gun violence in our country is an important discussion, and I am glad we are having this debate in Congress.”Again, how do background checks infringe on the rights of law-abiding citizens, and why isn't he arguing to repeal current background check law?
“While I appreciate the good-faith effort of many senators to address this significant issue, I will not support legislation that fails to address the real problems that lead to gun violence and would infringe on the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens."
**Sen. Kelly Ayote
Erica Lafferty, the daughter of slain Sandy Hook Elementary School principal Dawn Hochsprung, confronted Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) Tuesday over her vote against expanding background checks for firearm purchases.The reason Ayote gave for opposing expanded background checks was "inconvenience." Lafferty asked a very good question. Why is shortening a gun purchase by 5 minutes worth letting Americans die?
"You had mentioned that day you voted, owners of gun stores that the expanded background checks would harm," Lafferty said, during a town hall in Warren, N.H. "I am just wondering why the burden of my mother being gunned down in the halls of her elementary school isn't more important than that." Ayotte told Lafferty she was sorry for her loss but did not directly answer the question.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/30/kelly-ayotte-erica-lafferty_n_3187918.html
Unrelated to background checks . . .
Well, one person's common sense is
another person's paranoid delusion of a conspiracy.
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