The steps President Obama is taking Tuesday to increase firearm background checks and close the “gun show loophole” are neither sensible, nor will they do anything to address the series of mass shootings that has lately plagued the nation, experts say.
So that begs the question: What’s the real reason he is doing this? And the answer is, he’s trying to chip away at your right to own a gun.
“The San Bernardino crime guns were purchased by persons who passed background checks. The same for the Sandy Hook crime guns,” said David Kopel, research director of the Independence Institute. “Federal studies show that gun shows are not a significant source of crime guns.”
John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, agreed.
Lott, whose organization has been tracking mass shootings since 2000, said there is “not one single case that would have been stopped with a so-called universal background check.” Moreover, “all three of the last attacks occurred in states with (what the Obama administration views as) ideal background checks,” he said.
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Gun expert Clayton Cramer of the College of Western Idaho in 2013 looked at seven states — plus Puerto Rico — that required background checks even for private purchases and found that the homicide rate in the year following the law taking effect declined by a statistically significant amount in two jurisdictions and rose in three states.
“It doesn’t seem to actually help murder rates at all,” he said during an appearance “Laura Ingraham Show.”
So here’s what’s really going on.
Obama’s order would try to eliminate the so-called “gun show loophole” by having the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms widen the requirements for who needs a license, and who must conduct background checks in order to sell firearms. As it stands in current law, individuals who sell firearms over the Internet or at gun shows, and do not do so as their primary means of income, are not considered to be “engaged in the business of firearms” and do not need to obtain a federal license or run federal background checks.
Obama’s decree seeks to change that. And he has given the government leeway to go after even the most infrequent, individual seller and consider them “engaged in the business” of firearm sales. The language of Obama’s order leaves ample room for an activist executive branch to trample on Americans’ Second Amendment rights and theoretically require an individual who sells only one or two guns a year, and does not earn his living from those sales, to get a license to make the sale.
Lott, one of the nation’s top gun rights experts, said the Democrats’ long-term strategy is to make gun ownership prohibitively costly for the average American. Controlling behavior by hitting the wallet is a favorite tactic of the Left (think carbon offsetting taxes on flights, the tobacco tax in New York City, and more.).
Licenses cost money, and the average person isn’t going to go through the hassle and expense of getting licensed just to sell a couple of guns at a gun show, for which they may make less money than the cost of the dealer’s license.
Cramer said he sees an ulterior motive in Obama and his fellow Democrats pursuing a politically unpopular gun control agenda. Well-heeled gun control advocate Michael Bloomberg is dangling campaign funds.
“It’s an attempt in this direction,” Cramer said. “In practice, I think the more important thing is, the Democrats desperately need to do this because they need Bloomberg’s money.”
Republicans in Congress are not entirely without options in their response to Obama’s plan. They could issue a legal challenge, causing the proposed new laws to get “stuck in the courts,” Lott said. But there are also legislative options available, according to Kopel.
“If Obama claims that his proposed new regulations are mere clarifications of a vague statute, Congress can always amend the statute to remove any alleged vagueness. Alternatively, Congress should enact a statute forbidding ATF to write gun control regulations,” said Kopel.
In a statement released before the details of Obama’s plan were revealed, House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said that “while we don’t yet know the details of the plan, the president is at minimum subverting the legislative branch, and potentially overturning its will.”
Obama’s executive actions might not do much to stop gun violence, but his consistent attacks on Second Amendment rights have certainly provoked a stampede to the gun shop. The number of federal background checks through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System for gun purchases has skyrocketed since June, increasing dramatically after Obama’s political posturing on gun control in the wake of a string of shootings in the fall of 2015.
Obama’s actions have accelerated a trend that has been occurring for over a decade now. In 2002, there were fewer than 8.5 million background checks conducted on potential gun buyers. By 2008, there were almost 13 million background checks conducted. In 2015, there were over 23 million background checks conducted.
Even the rabidly pro-gun-control New York Times was forced to admit in a report released in early December that the “vast majority of guns used in 15 recent mass shootings, including at least two of the guns used in the San Bernardino attack, were bought legally and with a federal background check.”
“As professor James A. Fox of Northeastern University has pointed out, mass shootings tend to be planned very far in advance. So it is unrealistic to expect that laws will prevent determined criminals from acquiring firearms, one way or another,” Kopel said.
The same New York Times report also revealed that “at least eight gunmen had … documented mental health problems that did not prevent them from obtaining their weapons,” which lends much support to congressional Republicans’ and gun-rights advocates’ insistence that mass shootings are a mental health issue, not one of gun control.
To the administration’s credit, Obama’s plan of action announced Tuesday does include a proposal for a $500 million investment in mental health resources.
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