Columbus Dispatch editorial parrots gun grabbers' new pitch to Obama

By Jeff Riley

In an editorial published on Sunday November 30th, 2008 the Columbus Dispatch agitates for "closing" private sales loophole for gun owners. Interesting timing, given a Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence-issued press release on the same date, addressing the same topic.

You can read the Dispatch editorial, which chides Congress as having "failed" to enforce background checks on "private sellers, who use gun shows, the Internet and other means to peddle their wares" here.

The Brady press release, which concludes by calling for "the Obama Administration and the new Congress to take effective action to improve public safety by requiring Brady criminal background checks for all gun sales" (emphasis added) is here.

The Editors at the Dispatch didn't have to do much work here - it's mostly cut and paste with absolutely no fact checking of the Brady statistics!

Let's start with their claim that 40% of all gun sales in the U.S. are "off the books" i.e. not through a licensed dealer. Where did they get that number? That number comes from a report entitled "Brady Checks and Gun Crime Traces".[1]

The Bradys cherry-picked the statistic that 40% of dealers at gun shows were "unlicensed", but what they failed to tell point out that in the same report the following findings were noted:

"Among the unlicensed 25 to 50% of gun show vendors are an undetermined number of vendors who do not sell firearms at all."

This report has been widely discredited in its methodology and is the only report out of 4 studies total, who claims that gun shows are a significant source of guns used to commit crimes (source: John Lott's book "The Bias Against Guns" page 193). The most exhaustive study done was the Bureau of Justice survey of 18,000 state prison inmates, which found that only 0.7 percent of inmates obtained guns from gun shows. Other BOJ studies indicated similar percentages going as high as 2% in one study but no higher.

In the Dispatch's article there is no mention of the above fact that less than 2% of guns used in criminal acts were purchased at gun shows. The fact is that most guns used in criminal acts are stolen. In a recent study published by the FBI in titled "Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation's Law Enforcement Officers," from a pool of over 800 incidents criminals surveyed indicated the following:

"Predominately handguns were used in the assaults on officers and all but one as obtained illegally, usually in street transactions or in thefts. In contrast to media myth, none of the firearms in the study was obtained from gun shows. What was available "was the overriding factor in weapon choice," the report says. Only 1 offender hand-picked a particular gun "because he felt it would do the most damage to a human being."

Researcher Davis, in a presentation and discussion for the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police, noted that none of the attackers interviewed was "hindered by any law--federal, state or local--that has ever been established to prevent gun ownership. They just laughed at gun laws." (emphasis added)

As noted the above transactions weren't your grandpa selling his gun to a gang-banger, they are criminals selling stolen guns to other criminals. Since criminals by their very definition are lawbreakers I highly doubt that they are going to perform a background check when selling their firearms.

Another question ignored by the Dispatch, how many of those denied to purchase a firearm through the Brady Instant Background check have been arrested? I can assure you the number is far below the claimed 1.6 million denials trumpeted by the Brady Bunch. Why aren't these dangerous people being put in jail? In 2006 alone 77,000 denials resulted in only 9,800 referrals for investigation/prosecution with 70 guilty pleas and only 3 criminal convictions via jury trial[2]. The Dispatch can only come up with one Brady-supplied example of a wanted felon who tried to purchase a firearm and was arrested not because of the attempted purchase, but because of an outstanding warrant. The outcome would have been the same if he had been stopped on the street for jaywalking, yet the Dispatch is not agitating for background checks for all pedestrians.

The fact of the matter is the most important change to this argument is that the gun show "loophole" has now been enlarged to include all private sales. When that fails to reduce crime how soon will it be before the Dispatch and the Brady's call for a ban on all private sales? After that inevitable failure what does the future hold for gun owners?

Gun owners all over the country took some solace in the Heller vs. D.C ruling by the Supreme Court which in part protects the individual right to own a firearm. But so did the anti–gun crowd:

"By making it clear that law-abiding citizens have an individual right to possess guns for self-defense, the Supreme Court may have paved the way for the strong gun laws that Americans want and need to protect our communities from violent crime.", Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Center

Don't be fooled by the Brady Center's words above, they are working their long-term plan by the book. The Brady Campaign's original name was Handgun Control Inc. The founder, the late Pete Shields, made his goals clear in an interview in with the New Yorker Magazine in 1976:

We'll take one step at a time, and the first is necessarily -given the political realities - very modest. We'll have to start working again to strengthen the law, and then again to strengthen the next law and again and again. Our ultimate goal, total control of hand-guns, is going to take time. The first problem is to slow down production and sales. Next is to get registration. The final problem is to make possession of all handguns and ammunition (with a few exceptions) totally illegal. (emphasis added)

Think your rights to buy, own or use your guns are protected……they aren't. Think about the following scenario, some of which has already become reality in the gun control struggle:

• Reduce the number of legal federally licensed firearms dealers. There has been a 78% reduction in the number of FFL dealers since 1994[3]. Most of these dealers were put out of business because they were part-time owners of gun stores so called kitchen counter sellers. "The sharp drop in gun dealers is one of the most important, and little noticed, victories in the effort to reduce firearms violence in America," declared Marty Langley, a policy analyst with the Violence Policy Center. No legal dealers = no legal firearms for sale
• Reintroduction of "junk lawsuits" targeting the firearms manufacturers intending to bankrupt them and put them out of business. No manufacturers = no new firearms for civilians (of course the government isn't going to give up their monopoly on force)
• Restrictions/regulation of current firearms owners. Make it prohibitive to purchase, own, or use a firearm and most people will give up.

Finally the master stroke…..if you can't outright ban guns you can reduce the pool of those legally allowed to purchase, own or possess a firearm by this simple step:

Increase the pool of "prohibited persons" by creating more criminals. All felons are barred from owning/possessing a firearm. As detailed the Cato Institute book "Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization of Almost Everything Author James V. DeLong writes, "When the government criminalize almost everything, it also trivializes the very concept of criminality" There are now over 4,000 federal crimes filling some 27,000 pages of the U.S. Code, including violations of the regulations expressed in the tens of thousands of pages of the Code of Federal Regulations. Ship a lobster in an opaque plastic bag[4] = felony and now you are a prohibited person.

Recent spikes in gun sales have been labeled by some in the press as "paranoia" and they deride gun owners as "fearing the slippery slope". Yet based on their words and actions the gun grabbing crowd has proven that our fears are not unfounded. Groups such as the Bradys and the Violence Policy Center have been re energized and are working feverishly to accomplish their stated goals. With President Obama in the White House and an eager, compliant press such as the Dispatch, it has never been a better time to be a gun control advocate. What happens next depends on us….the law-abiding gun owners. Will we let our freedoms be whittled away under the guise of "sensible gun laws" or will we band together and remind our government:

"People shouldn't fear their government; the government should fear the people."

Take the time today to support local pro liberty, pro gun organization such as Buckeye Firearms, as well as your local pro gun legislators. Most of this fight will take place in the States and Cities/Municipalities and it is here we can make the most difference.

Jeff Riley is a Southwest Ohio volunteer for Buckeye Firearms Association.

Footnotes:

[1] Brady Checks and Gun Crime Traces 1999, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
http://www.atf.treas.gov/pub/treas_pub/gun_show.pdf

[2] Enforcement of the Brady Act, 2006, BJS-Sponsored, 2008, NCJ 222474. (13 pages)http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/grants/222474.pdf

[3] Number of U.S Gun Dealers has plunged, August 2007, Mchael Doye, McClatchy –Tribunehttp://www.roanoke.com/business/wb/xp-128588

[4] "McNab v. Untied States: A Lobster Tale: Invalid Foreign Laws Lead to Years in Prison," November 2003 Case Study, Overcriminalized.com (Heritage Foundation), www.overcriminalized.com/stuides/2003.11_McNab.html.