Democrats pushing for expanded background checks for gun buyers don’t care that such checks don’t actually reduce gun deaths, and Republicans need to continue sounding the alarm on the harm background checks can actually do.
Look at the statistics and you’ll find both zero evidence that background checks deter violence and the typical liberal display of number-fudging, reliance on tiny sample sizes, and outright lying. Democrats’ only “weapon” in this debate is a weak example citing the repeal of a background check law in Missouri that lead to a one-month spike in gun violence.
Background checks function only when the individual requesting a privilege—a gun, a job, security clearance, a credit card—is part of law-abiding society, understands the consequences of his actions, and can’t otherwise acquire the thing he seeks if his history doesn’t check out. Would-be mass murderers don’t conscientiously submit their sordid histories to the vagaries of a police investigation. If they anticipate trouble buying firearms, there are a million other places their untroubled souls can find them.
But why not enact expanded background checks if it’ll make liberals happy? Why not agree to an innocuous restriction if it won’t cause any harm?
Because it most likely will cause a great deal of harm. Just as with magazine size restrictions, limits on ammunition purchases, and mandatory waiting periods, the only people who abide by gun control regulations are law-abiding citizens who want to do the right thing. But these people often need a gun quickly to defend themselves against a crime wave, a stalker sending threatening messages, or an angry domestic abuser.
It only makes sense that gang members, burglars, or wife-beaters would favor restricting the firepower their would-be victims could legally acquire. The rule should be: Ask which laws career criminals want passed, then pass the opposite ones.
As John Lott at the New York Post has shown, virtually all gun purchase denials resulting from background checks are faulty and eventually reversed. In 2009, only 0.018 percent of all 70,101 denials resulted in federal prosecutions or plea deals for providing false information. One wonders where all the hardened felons are that are willing to submit their criminal histories for review and be denied the weapons with which they would have gunned down civilians.
Background checks are so insidious that even solid conservatives like Senator Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who has an A rating from the National Rifle Association, are angling to cosponsor laws supporting them.
Democrats know that getting nominal Republican support for their legislation is the only hope they have of burnishing it with any legitimacy. They keep throwing around dubious polls—conducted in the wake of Newtown but no longer relevant—showing that 90 percent of Americans favor background checks. If support is overwhelming, why is it so important for Democrats to get Republicans on board? Wouldn’t passing strict background checks be a great way to do the right thing while scoring a political victory over Republicans?
If Congress passes expanded background checks, it will be because Democrats were able to snooker Republican politicians who haven’t done their homework on what they assume to be a harmless political giveaway.
