It's All About You
Re-posted from February 16, 2019 at Black Man With A Gun, in light of the current push for new gun control legislation…specifically, expanded background checks. The not-too-distant (but seemingly forgotten) Aurora, Illinois shooting illustrates why they’re a bad idea.
Occasionally they will slip up and tell you what the real objective of their "commonsense gun safety" and "good first step" gun laws really is. Notice this comment from a Facebook thread discussing the recent shooting in Aurora, Illinois:
That's right. The commenter here never mentions how useful background checks are in keeping guns away from criminals; rather he points out their utility in creating lists of gun owners which can be used later to confiscate guns. Remember that...it's going to come up again.
Then, since police had his name on a list, they raided his home and confiscated all his guns.
Actually, that's not true. I made that part up. What the police did do after revoking his FOID card was...send him a letter. In the letter he was informed that the FOID card was revoked and ordered to surrender his guns to his local police department. It's unclear what happened after that (other than the part where he still had a gun and shot people with it).
Bev Horne/Daily Herald via AP
I suppose it is possible that the police were simply too busy to go get his guns, but then that doesn't make the confiscation of the hundreds of millions of American guns look too feasible, does it?
It's also possible that the police did go looking for his guns, and he hid them. Or that they did confiscate them and he simply went out and got another (without a FOID card or background check). Doesn't make those gun control laws look too effective, does it?
And it is possible that the reason that cops typically don't go all raid-ey and confiscate-y on this guy and other prohibited persons who fail background checks is because none of this is about disarming criminals, it's about disarming YOU.
In fact, people who fail background checks while attempting to purchase firearms are almost NEVER prosecuted (12 prosecutions out of 112,090 denials in 2017), and there are a couple of reasons for this. The first and foremost reason is the extremely high rate of false positives (some estimates run into the 90% range). Bear in mind that when we say "false positive" in regards to a NICS background check failure, we are actually talking about a law-abiding citizen who was denied their right to purchase a firearm.
This brings us to the second big reason that there are so few prosecutions for failed background checks, and it is because...you may want to sit down for this...actual criminals don't submit to background checks in the first place. Studies have shown time and again (as if we needed a study to tell us this) that criminals obtain their firearms by buying them on the street from other criminals, from friends and family members, or most commonly by stealing them. Sorry, but I don't think you're going to get a crook to take that stolen gun to an FFL for a background check.
That's why the Illinois murderer still had a gun, despite all the controls in place in that state. He was never going to submit to gun control laws, and the truth is they weren't designed to stop criminals like him. They are only meant to create an ever-tightening noose around the necks of law-abiding citizens, until the point that it is impossible for people like you to own a firearm (see the Facebook comment at the top of the page).
It's not about crime. It's all about you, baby.
