LAST Wednesday, I wrote about President Barack Obama’s call for Americans “to keep the pressure on the members of Congress to do the right thing and “support common-sense reforms like requiring universal background checks, or restoring the ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines…to tell them there’s no legislation to eliminate all guns; there’s no legislation being proposed to subvert the Second Amendment…”
“We may not be able to prevent every massacre or random shooting. No law or set of laws can keep our children completely safe. But if there’s even one thing we can do, if there’s just one life we can save, we’ve got an obligation to try.”
One of the measures that Obama has been pushing is for Congress to enact laws that will require background checks for ALL gun buyers.
As CNN explained, anytime someone buys a gun from a federally licensed gun dealer, the dealer is required to run a check on the buyer, by submitting his/her name to the federal database.
The federal database consists of criminal records and mental health records, as provided by federal and state courts and agencies.
Supporters of stricter gun control laws contend that “universal background checks” may be able to close loopholes in federal gun sales laws.
While US law requires background checks for all people who try to buy firearms from federally licensed dealers, federal law does not require background checks for “private transactions.”
These gun sales are completed “at gun shows, on street corners, over the Internet or from friends or neighbors.”
The powerful lobby group National Rifle Association (NRA) and other gun rights advocates argue that doing background checks is a “failed system” and will just be a waste of scarce resources allocated to law enforcement.
Advocates for stricter gun control laws, on the other hand, contend that “background checks have a huge deterrent effect. People who are ineligible to buy a gun are unlikely to try if they know they are going to be subjected to a background checks.”
They refer to a statement from the Department of Justice to prove their point: “From the time when the gun control measures of the Brady Act were enacted on March 1, 1994, through the end of 2008, the federal government processed more than 97 million applications for gun transfers or permits…Almost 1.8 million applications were denied.”
In the most recent Quinnipiac Poll (released on Thursday), an overwhelming 92 percent of voters supported universal background checks. In households with a gun, 91 percent were in favor, while 8 percent were opposed, according to the poll.
The same sentiments were aired by viewers of The Filipino Channel’s (TFC) Balitang America daily opinion poll, “Isyu Ngayon.”
92 percent of those who voted also believe universal background checks may help solve the problem of gun violence in America.
Our readers, however, expressed more diverse opinions about this issue. Here are some of their comments:
“Yes, if it can be implemented.. how can you implement a transaction in the streets? …it may need a gun registry for it to work and that would be a big issue to gun owners in general…I’ve been to a few gun shows. When i bought firearms there, I had to fill up a form for background check… so not sure where the ‘gun show loophole’ is. Gun sale between private citizens usually [does not] happen inside the gun show, maybe outside of it, so how can you implement the background check in that transaction?” – Teddy L. Bentulan
“Universal background checks is not a panacea. Most violence by criminals would’ve not been prevented by it. Evil doers abound.” – Ed Totanes
“We are Filipino nurses living here in Texas. We own three handguns. When I bought each of these guns, we had to go through rigorous background checks. My wife and I also have a ‘carry permit,’ even though we already passed the background check. Plus, we also had to go through the same process again for a new gun purchase, including intensive training, which includes safe handling and safekeeping, responsibility to unarmed civilians, etc. Now what other background checks do we need to go through? The only people who will be affected by this law will be ‘law-abiding citizens,’ who purchase guns legally. The thugs and criminals won’t register theirs.” – Neil Ezperanzate
“In my humble opinion, nobody should own guns — even the police. The Britons do not have one. (Note from Wikipedia: In the United Kingdom firearms are tightly controlled by law. The United Kingdom has one of the lowest rates of gun homicides in the world with 0.07 recorded intentional homicides committed with a firearm per 100,000 inhabitants in 2009, compared to the United States’ 3.0 (over 40 times higher) and to Germany’s 0.21 (3 times higher). With the exception of Northern Ireland, it has been public policy that police officers in the UK should not generally be armed with firearms. Shooting fatalities of members of the police are extremely rare.)” – Marissa Torres Langseth
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Gel Santos Relos is the anchor of TFC’s “Balitang America.” Views and opinions expressed by the author in this column are are solely those of the author and not of Asian Journal and ABS-CBN-TFC. For comments, go to www.TheFil-AmPerspective.com, https://www.facebook.com/Gel.Santos.Relos
