By: Ted Patterson

Counterfeit-conservatives Senators Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania) and Delaware’s Chris Coons are on the hunt to push new background check legislation in Congress. Florida Senators Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson are also calling for more action around background checks for those trying to exercise their constitutional rights.

Even President Trump has been sucked into gun control hysteria, making contradictory statements that are worrying gun owners across the country.

So is there actually any evidence to support the race for stricter and stricter background checks and government hoops for buying a gun?

Dr. John Lott, Ph.D., President of the Crime Prevention Research Center, says no, it’s just the opposite. He reports:

“States with these background checks experienced an increase of 15 percent in per capita rates of mass public shooting fatalities. They also saw a 38 percent increase in the rate of injury. Nor is there evidence that expanded background checks reduce rates of any type of violent crime, including mass public shootings, suicide, murder of police officers and domestic violence against women. Other academic research by economists and criminologists consistently confirms this.”

In his groundbreaking research on this topic, Lott and other researchers show the truth:
pattersongraph
(Source: Do Background Checks on Private Gun Transfers Help Stop Mass Public Shootings? By John R. Lott Jr. January 2, 2016. Crime Prevention Research Center)

Professor C.D. Michel from Chapman University School of Law points out another inconvenient truth:

“In a report titled ‘Firearm Use by Offenders’, our own Federal Government noted that nearly 40 percent of all crime guns are acquired from street level dealers, who are criminals in the black market business of peddling stolen and recycled guns. Standing alone, this shows that ‘universal’ background checks would have an incomplete effect on guns used in crimes.”

Source: Why universal background checks won’t work

After devastating attacks in Copenhagen and Paris, the Washington Post and European leaders were forced to acknowledge that even though they have all but banned firearms in Europe and constructed very intrusive background check systems, criminals are still getting what they need to harm people.

First thing’s first — and the mainstream, drive-by media, just can’t get this through their heads: criminals do not care what regulations you put in place. They are going to illegally acquire firearms by any means possible.

Any background check legislation affects law-abiding gun owners, not criminals. What these politicians are doing is leaving the very people we would want armed bogged down in government red tape.

Let’s not forget that Nikolas Cruz, the shooter in the recent Parkland, Florida school shooting passed his background check. Even the liberal New York Times had to admit the truth, reporting on an ATF agent who admitted of the Florida shooter:

“No laws were violated in the procurement of this weapon.”

We had an assault weapons ban from 1994 to 2004 — and what did that accomplish?

Sadly, government failed at every level. The same gun-grabbers who are calling for tough background checks coming off the Florida shooting refuse to acknowledge the following:

● The FBI was warned about the shooter. The tipster’s warning could not have been clearer: “I know he’s going to explode.”
● Before the Florida shooting, the lady who made the call said she was “worried [Cruz] might resort to slipping into a school and shooting the place up.” Forty days later, he did just that, and the FBI was explicitly warned about the threat.
● Three months before the shooting, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office was called by someone about Cruz saying, “I need someone here because I’m afraid he comes back and he has a lot of weapons.”
● Social services were called into Cruz’s home.
● FBI was tipped-off about concerning social media posts.
● The Broward County Sheriff’s Office was also tipped off about Cruz.
● Police were called to Cruz’s house dozens of times over the years.

You can read transcripts of calls placed in to the FBI.

The problem was not that “we had no data” on Cruz. It wasn’t that he was able to slip past diligent government agents because of a loophole in the system.

This was a straight-up epic failure on the part of government at every turn, from social services to local police to the federal government.

One thing should be crystal clear after the Parkland, Florida shooting: expanding government power at the expense of Constitutional liberties doesn’t work.

Background checks are nothing more than a firearms registration system, which has historically been a precursor to full-fledged firearms confiscation. Many point to Nazi Germany as one of the best examples of what comes of gun registration. Most people probably do not know that it was not the Nazis nor Hitler who initiated gun registration. It actually was the preexisting Weimar government’s initiative put into law because of their fears of the Communists and Nazis. The Weimar government implemented laws that the Nazis would later use to oppress the German people, namely, German Jews.

Although Hitler rapidly expanded upon what the Weimar government had instituted, this historical event reminds us that well-intentional laws passed by good people can be used by the next round of political operatives to devastating effect. This is why it is so important to stop any hint of universal background checks: such a measure could open the door to a disastrous future.

What’s more, if we cannot trust our government to act on real threats, as evidenced in the recent Florida tragedy, how in the world are we going to trust them with managing a national database on gun owners?

Members of Congress Get Stuck on These "Lists:"

Given the privacy breaches of the past, the use by the Obama administration’s IRS of information to target Tea Party groups, and the illegal spying on American citizens that government at all levels is up to these days — the background check scam in this country must be rolled back, not doubled-down upon.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Gunpowder Magazine.

Ted Patterson is pro-freedom political activist and consultant writing from Maryland. Contact him at [email protected].

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