The Economist explains; Why America doesn’t have universal background checks for gun-buyers
The Economist attempts to disarm Americans with their article “The Economist explains; Why America doesn’t have universal background checks for gun-buyers” which is riddled with errors of fact and misstatements as it explains the issue to a largely European audience;
The police bosses are on the president’s 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’s 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?
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 “the right of the people to keep and bear arms”.
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.
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;
is 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.
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.
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.
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.
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“.
The United States does have universal background checks, Economist, you should do your research.
Category: Gun Grabbing Fascists, Media
I used to subscribe to this magazine it seems over the last 2 or three years they have taken a turn to the ultra left that has been a little disturbing to me, a good friend of mine over in Germany said they have stopped reading it too because to do so is like reading a propaganda page for Obama or the Clintons…
sad that they have lost there grace…
but on the bright side people over in Europe seem to have no idea how to defend themselves other then let’s put our head in the ground and maybe it will go away…
“but on the bright side people over in Europe seem to have no idea how to defend themselves other then let’s put our head in the ground and maybe it will go away”
No, no; candlelight vigils. That’s the ticket. Oh, and hashtags are always very effective.
Word
Back in the day, before the salt water boating accident, I might have bought a lot of guns via the Internet. I seem to recall filling out a yellow sheet on every one of the sons of bitches.
“The proliferation of guns is one of the reasons for the substantial rise in violent crime in many American cities this year, they say.”
Well, from the FBI website we get:
There’s also a very pretty graph at the above link with a definite negative slope.
I wonder what data set The Economist is using.
I found the FBI 2014 report….violent crime continued to decline.
Got a real pretty graph there too… slope still negative.
I was wondering where the Data came from to after reading the article it’s sound like figure put out by the DNC to scare people or manipulate people..
Nah in some cities where there has been a noticeable increase it’s due to the attempted consolidation of drug turf by gangs looking to increase their economic stranglehold in the highly competitive street drug black market.
The Economist could have discovered all of that had they taken about 2.4 minutes to use a little Google-FU to ascertain the relationships between homicides and drugs in large urban areas.
Of course doing that raises a very uncomfortable series of questions that no one wants to delve into for fear of being labeled a racist. In NYC the data indicates a little over 90% of all homicides are perpetrated by blacks and latinos against other blacks and latinos over drugs in a fairly identifiable geographical area. Whites and Asians represent less than 7% and 3% respectively of those homicides.
Which raises the question why are so many young black and latino males finding it worth risking their lives to sell drugs?
We don’t like uncomfortable questions in the US anymore so it’s easier to blame all the people who aren’t criminals instead of discussing the difficult reality of being an inner city black or hispanic male finding family relationships through gang affiliation. That’s a problem that can’t be solved with simple hyperbole or platitude but requires a thorough and comprehensive series of solutions beyond building more prisons to address.
Better to keep it simple for the addle pated dimwits who appear to be an ever increasing presence in our celebrity worshipping culture these days.
I should have added that the NYC data is also similar to data sets for other communities like Chicago, LA, etc…urbanized areas with large drug gang associations tend to have similar data and outcomes.
Yea, VOV, the difficult questions people are afraid to ask. The shooting victims and shooters are way out of proportion to the percentage of Blacks and Hispanics in the general population. Why? The same TV shows are in inner-cities as in the suburbs and those states with fewer shootings. The same violent video games are available, too. Ditto the same Hollywood shoot-em-ups. Also, the public schools everywhere teach “drugs and guns are bad, mkay?” So, what gives? How about family structure for starters? How about parental negligence in failing to search junior’s room, to know where he is, to set some positive structure? I guess buying Teddy bears and candles to leave at shooting scenes are much easier. And, before I forget, how about some serious prison time for shooters?
These arguments come up way too often and aren’t supported by fact much, anymore. IIRC, NICS has a lot of problems, mostly with states failing to comply with the reporting requirements. Dylan Roof was an example of the system failing. Similarly with John Russell Houser. Both had histories that should have been reported in the system but weren’t.
I’ve purchased a few firearms online and have been required to complete a ATF Form 4473 on every occasion.
Yeah, that seems to be a common theme, no matter how well the guys at the gun shop know me.
Just fill this out, and we’ll get you on your way.
Put a gun in a box and take it to a Post Office and try to ship it. IIRC, USPO won’t accept a box with a gun in it regardless of the addressee. I don’t know if it would matter if I was a FFL.
Put a gun in a box and take it to UPS or FedEx and try to ship it. IIRC, UPS requires me to verify that the addressee is a licensed dealer by providing a copy of their FFL. UPS has a partial list of FFLs so I don’t have to take in an FFL every time.
This whole “guns on the internet” thing is a pile of equine excrement and none may abide its odor. The whole “private gun show sales” provides similar olfactory stimulus. Closing both “loopholes” will have zero effect on crime and will greatly inconvenience honest people – which is, of course, the goal.
The Economist asks, “Why doesn’t America have universal background checks for gun-buyers?” My answer is, “I say such an objective is pointless. Why do you think that you want it?”
Well, what did you expect? Truth, justice and the American way?
You ought to know by now that these twits have their own agenda which does not include having real freedom.
And I thought those episodes of ‘Twilight Zone’ and ‘Star Trek’ about peculiar societies were only fiction.
“The politically powerful National Rifle Association and other pro-gun groups oppose universal background checks or indeed any law that could restrict gun sales.”
Shouldn’t the author then explore why this “evil” organizations is so politically powerful? Could it be they represent the beliefs of a majority of citizens?
I do not read The Economist but the British publication has been around a very long time. I was intrigued by the absence of bylines and the use of initials by the mag’s writers. In this case, the writer is V.V.B. It didn’t take very long for me to conclude that VVB is Vendeline Von Bredow, the Economist’s US Midwest correspondent who works out of Chicago. She is a Columbia grad, has been with the mag about 15 years in several capacities and has worked for the Wall Street Journal, among other outfits. Her name sounds to me like a blue-blood pseudonym but apparently isn’t. The article that is the subject of this post reads like it was written by someone who really doesn’t have a clue about the topic and has done scant, if any, research into the matter at all. And I assume all of that to be the case here. Or maybe I am altogether off the mark and vvb is another writer. Not.
You weren’t really expecting something as simple as accountability, were you? Naw, didn’t think so, but we can always hope for a change in that regard.
Well they almost got it right, if they had added a few words to one sentence.
“The proliferation of guns is one of the reasons for the substantial rise in violent crime in many American cities this year, they say.”
Should read:
“The proliferation of guns, in the hands of criminals, is the major reason for the substantial rise in violent crime in many American cities this year, they say.
Sparks my friend, that is a great edit to that statement.
See above for my comments, I couldn’t agree more with you even if I tried…
I keep wondering who this omniscient “they” is that all the pundits and Libturds keep quoting and getting their stats from?
Literal common language definitions seem to be beyond Libtards of the world. John, you nailed it with the infringed part.
Odd….I was at a gunshow this weekend and there were lot’ of guns. There were also lot’s of FFL Dealers ready to do the forms. I also have never bought a gun over the internet from “My names Tyrone. I got’s me a 9. Meet me at the Golden Corral with a Jefferson and it’s yours no questions”
This crap is like a zombie. It keeps coming back up over and over. I had a really good conversation with some friends of mine from England that run a dive outfit. They couldn’t understand Americans fascination with guns and trotted out the whole nine yards of silliness. I shot everything down and they said something like “oh, never heard that stuff before”. I also explained the difference between a Subject of The Crown and a Citizen. They were not happy but they couldn’t argue.
Mark Twain once described a gold mine as, “a hole in the ground owned by a liar.”
I’ll paraphrase that a bit to state, a firearm statistic used by a gun-grabber is either outdated, skewed, or has been debunked as a complete fabrication.