How the NRA helps arm criminals

on November 16, 2015 at 9:33 AM, updated November 16, 2015 at 9:34 AM
By Bob Nicholson, guest columnist

Stories about gun violence in the USA run the gamut, from the comical (we lead the world in gun owners shot by their pets), the unusual (three shot with one bullet when a man in Cracker Barrel dropped his gun), to the tragic (we also lead the world in mass shootings).

Through all of this, the National Rifle Association has been resolute in its mission to protect Americans' access to guns. Their success extends far beyond protecting Second Amendment rights.

They have been so effective at limiting or weakening gun violence prevention laws that they can legitimately be accused of helping to arm many of the United States' criminals. And while they do this they cynically claim that there are plenty of laws on the books if you just enforce them.

Before you fire off angry letters and comments, please read just a few ways how the NRA's mission has strayed from protecting law abiding gun owner's rights to keeping the flow of arms to crooks steady.

First, the NRA helps criminals by making it easier to buy guns in a private sale where no background check is required. The NRA once supported background checks for all gun sales, a policy they now reject.

The NRA objection, fear of a national gun owner registry, is a paranoid appeal to the conspiracy minded – and it works. A background check takes about 15 minutes to fill out (less if you write faster than I do) and another 15 minutes for a gun dealer to run the check. What possible rational explanation can the NRA advance for having a system where gun purchases from dealers are subject to this reasonable requirement, then not require the same check for private sales?

Critics of background checks contend that criminals don't fill out background checks and they are wrong; between 1.5 and 2 million gun sales to ineligible buyers have been prevented by background checks. Yet, thanks to NRA political pressure, we leave this glaring loophole for private sales open for felons to exploit.

When background checks were first required, the ATF destroyed check records after a holding period of six months. This period is now only 24 hours, another NRA innovation that aids criminals by making it harder to identify straw sellers of guns. A straw purchaser is someone who buys a gun with the intent of reselling that gun to an ineligible buyer.

Typically there is a pattern to a straw seller's gun purchases - multiple gun purchases from multiple gun dealers over a period of days. By destroying background check records in only 24 hours, the ATF is prevented from being able to detect this purchase pattern. Some lengthier, but still reasonable additional holding period of these records might allow the government to identify the pattern of gun resellers while still protecting legal gun owner's rights.

 NRA friendly congressmen also routinely attach riders to bills unrelated to guns or the ATF (such as NASA funding) that neuter the ATF in other ways. These riders accomplish NRA goals, such as limiting the ATF's ability to computerize its records (slowing the investigation of crimes), limiting the ability to investigate gun dealers who may be knowingly selling guns to felons, or inhibit public health research into gun violence.  Perhaps someone from the NRA can explain how keeping gun dealers who arm criminals in business protects my Second Amendment rights.

Since the NRA has so effectively crippled the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, they have also made sure that no other government agency can step in and fill the void. In 1994 the NRA lobbied Congress into preventing any of the "functions, missions or activities" of the ATF to any other more effective agency, such as the FBI.

If you were wondering how out of touch the NRA has become, think about this - they strongly oppose legislation to prohibit the sale of guns to people on the terrorist watch list. Is any comment even needed here?

We need an honest debate about gun laws and how to reduce violence, balancing the protection of Second Amendment rights with realistic measures to keep guns away from lawbreakers. But the NRA, through scare tactics, exaggeration, lying and appeal to paranoia has shown they are not capable of participating in an honest debate.

Through their tactics, they make it easy for criminals to keep getting guns. And if you support the NRA, so do you.

http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/11/how_the_nra_helps_arm_criminal.html