After expressing concerns regarding pending gun control legislation in the US legislature (so-called “universal” background checks), I received the same form letter from her office that I have received numerous times, the one assuring me that she understands my concerns about the Second Amendment because she grew up in a home with firearms and hunters. Of course, the Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting, but I will let that slide for the moment.
I sent her the following email in response:
Senator,
I have received this same tired letter several times over the years you have been in office in response to concerns expressed regarding continued attacks on the Second Amendment.
"I support enforcement of laws that protect our children and our families from gun violence and other criminal activity.”
I would like to know what those laws are?
Heller vs. DC has already declared mandatory trigger locks and other mandatory storage laws unConstitutional on their face because, and I quote (from the syllabus for brevity’s sake),
"3. The handgun ban and the trigger-lock requirement (as applied to self-defense) violate the Second Amendment. The District’s total ban on handgun possession in the home amounts to a prohibition on an entire class of “arms” that Americans overwhelmingly choose for the lawful purpose of self-defense. Under any of the standards of scrutiny the Court has applied to enumerated constitutional rights, this prohibition—in the place where the importance of the lawful defense of self, family, and property is most acute—would fail constitutional muster. Similarly, the requirement that any lawful firearm in the home be disassembled or bound by a trigger lock makes it impossible for citizens to use arms for the core lawful purpose of self-defense and is hence unconstitutional.”
McDonald v. Chicago has already pre-empted so-called “red flag” laws that call for the confiscation of firearms without due process, noting that the Fourteenth Amendment declared the Bill of Rights to be operative on the States, therefore GUARANTEEING both the due process AND Second Amendment rights of citizens (again, quoting from the syllabus for the sake of brevity) :
“(3) The Court eventually moved in the direction advocated byJustice Black, by adopting a theory of selective incorporation by which the Due Process Clause incorporates particular rights contained in the first eight Amendments. See, e.g., Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335, 341. These decisions abandoned three of the characteristics of the earlier period. The Court clarified that the governing standard is whether a particular Bill of Rights protection is fundamental to our Nation’s particular scheme of ordered liberty and system of justice. Duncan, supra, at 149, n. 14. The Court eventually held that almost all of the Bill of Rights’ guarantees met the requirements for protection under the Due Process Clause. The Court also held that Bill of Rights protections must “all . . . be enforced against the States under the Fourteenth Amendment according to the same standards that protect those personal rights against federal encroachment.” Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U. S. 1, 10. Under this approach, the Court overruled earlier decisions holding that particular Bill of Rights guarantees or remedies did not apply to the States.See, e.g., Gideon, supra, which overruled Betts v. Brady, 316 U. S. 455. Pp. 15–19. (d) The Fourteenth Amendment makes the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms fully applicable to the States. Pp. 19–33.”
OK, so universal background checks will stop the killing, right?
Not so.
None other than the Washington Post evaluated Sen. Rubio’s claim that “None of the major shootings that have occurred in this country over the last few months or years that have outraged us, would gun laws have prevented them.” After an exhaustive overview of such shootings, they awarded Sen. Rubio with the rarely awarded Geppetto Checkmark, indicating that his statement was 100% factually true, WaPo Rubio Gun Control Claim Absolutely True. Even Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee acknowledged the fact that background checks would not keep firearms out of the hands of criminals when she stated from the floor of the House,
“Don’t condemn the gangbangers, they’ve got guns that are trafficked — that are not enforced, that are straw purchased and they come into places even that have strong gun laws.”
This is all backed up by a 2016 Department of Justice study, “Source and Use of Firearms Involved in Crimes: Survey of Inmates, 2016.” Only 1.3% obtained their firearms via retail outlets; only .8% obtained them at gun shows. 43% obtained them on the black market, while the remainder obtained them in one way or another from family and friends (stolen, straw purchased), found them at the scene, or convinced a stranger to make a straw purchase on their behalf. By the way, only .8% of all inmates used a rifle of ANY kind during the commission of their crimes;an even more infinitesimal fraction of that .8% (something on the order of .003%) used a so-called “assault rifle.” In the final analysis, background checks have stopped nothing; those who are denied the lawful sale of a firearm due to the results of a background check still manage to get their hands on firearms anyway, and let us not forget that Gabby Giffords’ shooter PASSED his background check, as did several other high profile shooters. The firearms used by the San Bernardino shooters firearms were straw purchased.
So lets go on to mandatory psychological evaluations prior to purchasing firearms.
In the wake of the GermanWings suicide several years ago, there were loud shouts for mandatory psychological evaluations, thinking that this would prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again. Noted psychologist Dr. Gary Greenberg in an article written for the New Yorker regarding the incident,
“[…] But as any mental-health professional will tell you (and as many did in the wake of the crash), nearly one in three Americans meets the criteria for a mental-disorder diagnosis in any year, and more than half of us will qualify at some point in our lives. Once diagnosed, people with mental illnesses, even severe psychotic disorders like schizophrenia, do not commit violent crimes at higher rates than the rest of the population. And most people who have had suicidal thoughts do not go on to kill themselves, let alone a planeload of strangers…
"Mental disorders cannot be diagnosed reliably; every day expert clinicians square off on witness stands over the proper diagnosis (if any) of criminal defendants. Even if we could put flight crews through the psychological equivalent of an airport body scanner, the results would still provide virtually no specific information about what someone would do in the future. Mental-health workers are called upon to make predictions frequently—to help a corporation decide if a job applicant will make a good employee, say, or to help the criminal-justice system decide if a sex offender can be discharged to the community—and yet unsuitable employees still get jobs and sex offenders deemed safe still re-offend…”
Psychologist Dr. Erin Brown echoed his thoughts during a segment of the Today Show:
“The idea nowadays that a full psychological workup would somehow clue you in to which pilots are going to do things like this, it's fiction."
Yet the Brady, Giffords, Bloomberg, and Every Town anti-firearms groups continue to insist that psychological evaluations are the magic bullet (forgive the pun) that should determine who should or should not own a firearm. If they can’t predict which lawfully-licensed pilots are going to take down an aircraft, then they certainly can't predict which firearms owners are likely to commit crimes with lawfully-owned firearms.
These are just a few of the measures that are said to be “common sense” and which advocates of gun control assure us will prevent crimes using firearms.
With all of this in mind, I would truly like to know what laws you back that 1) are Constitutional and 2) are going to insure that CRIMINALS aren’t going to get their hands on firearms while FULLY PROTECTING the rights of law abiding citizens.
In closing, I am going to include the following breakdown of so-called “gun deaths” that took place in the United States in 2016. I published this online a few years ago, and revised the numbers to bring them in-line with current CDC statistics:
In 2016 there were about 39,000 “firearm deaths.”
66% of those 39,000 deaths were self-inflicted; this was an increase over 2014. By the way, the number of non-firearms related suicides for 2016 actually increased more than firearms-related suicides did.
34% were gang-related. This number remained stable.
Less than 1,000 were accidental, and about 2,200 are non-gang related homicides. These numbers also remained stable.
Gun controllers honestly believe that background checks are going to stop that?
Restricting access to firearms isn’t going to stop suicides. Our suicide rate is about the same as Britain’s – which severely restricts access to firearms, and the world leader in suicides is Japan, which also severely restricts access to firearms, so the fact that firearms happen to be the tool of choice for suicides in the US is incidental (in Japan the two most popular methods of committing suicide are poison and jumping in front of trains).
Background checks aren’t going to stop gang-related firearm killings; Rep. Lee from Texas admitted as much when she told the House of Representatives that gang bangers use “trafficked” firearms.
OK, so we have 2,200 non-gang related homicides that we can do something about, right? Wrong. Most of the weapons used in the commission of crimes were obtained illegally, so, again, background checks will do nothing to reduce that number. One other observation: the homicide number doesn’t distinguish between justified police/civilian self-defense shootings and crime-related shootings; this is the problem inherent in using HOMICIDE statistics rather than MURDER statistics. It gives a false impression.
That leaves us with less than 1,000 deaths in a nation of 350,000,000 citizens who own 360,000,000 firearms that we can do something about, and most of those deaths can be chalked up to one thing – accidents.That is a problem that comes down to personal responsibility and individual lapses in judgement. Again, background checks are going to do nothing to change that.
Long story short, the premise that background checks will solve all of our perceived problems is hogwash. If gun controllers are truly concerned about those who have a history of crime and mental illness, then they need to concentrate their efforts on providing better access to mental health care and solving the gang/drug problem. Solve those two problems, and our “epidemic” of “gun violence” almost completely disappears.
