The rallying cry for gun controllers these days is, “We need to pass ‘commonsense gun safety laws,’ like a universal background check.”
This new universal catch phrase, approved by the left wing and their politicians who have lined up to say it without variation, don’t understand the underlying problem.
So-called commonsense (now one word) “gun safety” (must squeeze in safety) laws are nothing of the sort. All five politicians at the first democratic presidential non-debate said this phrase. You will not hear the term “gun-control laws” from them any longer, unless they slip up. Everyone now understands that “gun control” means gun bans.
The left can’t pass any “common-sense” gun-control laws because they aren’t proposing any.
In case you’ve forgotten, a gun-safety rule sounds like this: “Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target and you’re ready to fire.” The democrats falsely speaking of gun safety want none of that. “Treat every gun as if it’s loaded until you’ve personally proven otherwise.” This is not the law of gun safety the anti-rights side of the debate even wants known.
Only one political faction—the left-wing liberal progressive one—was seeking so-called gun-control laws, and found themselves fighting an uphill battle. They were confused and dismayed by the difficulty they faced in getting such a seemingly simple thing done. Why would anyone resist such a simple, logical, common-sense proposal, right? We the people know. They do not.
If it was indeed so simple, logical and common sense (“commonsense” is not a word, they’ve made it up in attempting to control the discussion, again) they would gain traction easily, wouldn’t they?
So the logical conclusion is: it is none of those things. It is not simple, or logical, or common sense, and the public can see that, even if left-wing politicians and their supporters cannot (or will not). Why not?
1) It’s not a background check—it’s a registration scheme
The Manchin-Toomey bill, The Dianne Feinstein bill, the existing Brady bill, in fact every so-called “background check” and gun-ban bill yet proposed by Second Amendment deniers has as a central element a gun-owner registration scheme. Everyone who reads these bills—which doesn’t include politicians or reporters (a national disgrace)—they all learn the same three things.
First, the public is being lied to. You are being told the bill is something it is not.
Second, the powers promoting these statutes know if they told you the truth you would rise up in righteous fury against them. (“We want to register everyone who has a gun, it’s not a background check like we’re telling you we’re interested in.”)
And third, they know their only hope for passage is deceit, which is grounds for removing them from office. But the deceit is so good they remain in power, and useful idiots keep them there (with help from ignorant and corrupt “news” media).
2) Registration schemes are not just bad, they are terrible.
There might be some support for gun registration schemes—if you could register criminals, or at least start there, but that’s against the law. It violates a criminal’s right against self incrimination in the Fifth Amendment. Criminals can’t have a gun in the first place, so you can’t very well put them all on a government list of armed people. Hey, if you could, you could just arrest them all and be done with it. We can’t even find them.
No, the registration list is only for innocent people, and that violates every tenet of American justice. Your name goes into the FBI criminal database, simply for ownership of property. We track the innocent, in the name of crime prevention. There is no crime fighting component to this scheme—it is a manifestation of paranoia on the part of the hoplophobes in society—people so afraid of guns they want officials to write down your name and address, because you own liberty’s teeth. Bad, bad, bad. I’ll write a separate paper about that another time.
3) We have a background check—and let the criminals go
We actually have identified more than one million criminals, mentally incompetent people, illegal aliens and others who are banned by law from having guns, or even trying to get one. Their names and addresses are on the forms they filled out in the retail gun stores where they went, with their money, to buy guns at retail. What did the FBI and BATFE and local police do about them?
They set them free. Put them right out on the street, with their money, looking buy a gun. Why on Earth would you spend limited funds on more checks—like the progressive liberal democrats are screaming for, to (theoretically) stop crime and mental cases—when you already have a million identified and you could use your resources to go after now?
Because that would be a common-sense proposal, and the left wing doesn’t want common-sense background check gun laws. There’s the evidence, the smoking gun, the proof. They want a gun-registration system for everyone’s guns.
That’s the question to ask the democrats during the next presidential debate.
“Why don’t you arrest the mental cases and felons and fugitives we’ve identified with the existing background check, whose names and addresses we already have, instead of seeking money for more background checks, since we don’t have money for both?”
“How do you respond to critics who charge that your call for expanded background checks is just a way to federally register more gun owners, instead of taking one million known criminals and mental incompetents off the streets to reduce crime and tragedy?”
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Alan Korwin is the author of 14 books, 10 of them on gun law. His book After You Shoot examines ways to lower your risks after a self-defense shooting. He has been invited twice to observe oral argument in gun cases at the U.S. Supreme Court. Reach him at GunLaws.com, where he is the publisher of Bloomfield Press.
