OPINION QUESTION: Do you think background checks work?

They don’t need a firearm to kill someone if they really want to kill someone, right,@Matthew_Arentzen?

Exactly! I really don’t understand why people think laws will stop someone from killing another person when laws against murder don’t stop people from murdering.

This one is a tough one. I know a lot of people who have gone through depression - myself included - who were no risk to themselves or others. Who is to judge when depression or another mental illness is too bad for someone to have a firearm? In cases of not being able to tell reality from hallucinations, that I can understand limiting a person’s access to something they could harm themselves or others with. If you can’t tell what’s real, you probably shouldn’t have a gun. :confused:

4 Likes

I would have to say my career in LE has colored my opinion on this. Like @Roger, I’ve seen several felons fill out the paperwork and try to buy a firearm that have been caught by the process. I’ll readily admit they weren’t the brightest light bulb in the house, but they were caught because of the process.

In addition to having those LE experiences, I have a friend that has suffered from mental illness that has been institutionalized for a couple of months. Even though they received treatment and are no longer institutionalized, they still lose track of reality to a small degree and invent situations in their mind concerning relationships they have. Not a lot of their friends know this about them as they tend to move from relationship to relationship, dropping friends because of these perceived situations they make up in their mind. At one point, this person went through the class for a CCW and passed. The only thing preventing them from applying for a CCW was the fact they knew they would either have to lie on the background form and that their period of being in the institution might have been reported. I am 100% happy they can not get a gun through legal channels and I know them enough to know they won’t be buying a weapon from a van in a back alley. Now they may get a hold of one through a friend, but at least they don’t have access to them from Walmart or a regular gun dealer. So, in these two situations, I’ve seen good arise from background checks and have to hope that even in this gray area, maybe someone has been spared being a victim in other instances like these.

5 Likes

I don’t have anything to hide and since I’ve done over 100 background checks I don’t worry to much about them. If it makes the anti gunners feel better so be it.

1 Like

I’ve got a question with a slight spin on this one - do you think the felons will just go to another person they know from jail and get a gun on the black market after being turned down legally for a gun?

4 Likes

If there wasn’t a charge to it, I’d be better with it - the cost can make it that much harder for someone on a limited income to purchase a firearm.

The purists out there would argue that we don’t need a background check to exercise any of our other rights, why do we need one to exercise our 2nd Amendment rights?

3 Likes

In the state where I worked, they’d get two years or more for attempting to buy the weapon and usually did not get bail while awaiting trial. But yeah, once released after that, I would hope they wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to get one through legal channels again. You could credit having a background check for taking them off the street for 2 years. Or you could credit their stupidity for taking themselves off the street for 2 years. Either way, they wouldn’t be preying on society for a while.

3 Likes

While not a background check, we have other checks on our rights. We have the right to freely assemble, but sometimes have to get a permit for our group to do so. We have the right to free speech, but have limitations on that through state laws. We have 4th Amendment rights but have exigent circumstance exemptions to that right. These are similar circumstances that we don’t hear many people complain about.

Edit to add: Just playing Devil’s Advocate because you said I should :slight_smile:

2 Likes

I love it, @Shepherd! There will be newbies here who are encountering this type of argument in their daily lives and our back and forth here will help them form better talking points to educate others.

Great response!!!

2 Likes

Dawn,

Exactly. It’s a comparison to when firearms are rendered as “weapons of war”. Weapons of war are the words that declare war. The mind in any crime are the blueprints for disaster. Common sense and it’s characteristics are a lost art, lead by the lost and losing. Fear is the paintbrush, or is it the idea?

4 Likes

Part of the issue I see is these types of laws are based in the “if it saves just one life” fallacy. If it saves just one life, it’s noble and good. The problem is that presumes two things:
first, that it does not cost any lives… in fact it implicitly denies any lives will be lost or harmed because if it, because just one to the plus side is enough to tip the scale. We know this isn’t true… someone will be incorrectly denied a firearm when they should have one and will be unable to defend themselves because if it.
The second party of the fallacy is that it directly impacts the bad actors as a primary function. If there was study data available, I’m guessing we’d find the vast majority of people denied or inconvenienced are law abiding not criminals.

There is a perception that we are entitled to live risk-free lives that’s become ever more part of our background expectations since the 1950s. Its as if people think their rights are being violated if the government doesn’t protect them from any possibility of harm. It implies that its ok for others to be inconvenienced or have their rights curtailed or even be put in harm’s way as long as they, personally, are protected.

This demand for a risk-free life via government regulation is going to cost all of us all of our rights eventually. It is what makes us child wards of a parental state.

The “if it saves just one life” mentality behind background checks may catch the odd stupid felon, but it decreases the autonomy of law abiding citizens far more, both through direct inappropriate delay and denial, and through the incremental infantalization of free citizens.

For me, we’re trading something incalculably valuable, our autonomy and freedom, for the fantasy promise of a risk-free life.

I’m opposed to any law which disproportionally affects the law abiding. We have a lot of laws that offer maximum restrictions on the law abiding and give very little benefit in return. “If it saves just one life” is being used to turn us all into infants in the eyes of the law.

/rant

2 Likes

You make some awesome points, @Zee. If it saves just one life, we should carry for our self-defense.

4 Likes

First, let me say, in general, I agree with you to a point. In my post, I didn’t mean to say if a background check saves one life, then I’m for it. If I came across that way, I didn’t mean to.

FBI statistics show that over 1 million people in a 16 year period were stopped from illegally purchasing a firearm by a background check. I would conjecture that stopped a lot of people from being victimized, not just one.

My firearm is an important part of my self defense system, but I would be totally wrong in thinking that it, in and of itself, is going to keep me safe. Someone that has an immediate need to protect themself should also be educated to make their home more secure with those things in the discussion on home protection. They should fortify their exterior doors and windows, add cameras and alarm systems with motion sensors that warn them when someone is walking up their driveway or cutting across their yard. Thinking they are safe just because they purchased their first firearm leads to untrained individuals getting hurt or hurting the wrong person. It is a fallacy and disservice for any of us to promote the idea that a potential victim is now safe just because they could purchase a firearm with out a background check or waiting period. (this is not directed at you @Zee, I know you advocate extensive training and learning all levels of use of force) In addition to security features, they also need the training we’ve all discussed such as pepper spray/gel, impact weapons, flashlights, hand to hand combat/martial arts training to legitimately be safe. Perhaps the most important training of all is to use their brain and situational awareness to observe potential threats and pre-plan for an emerging situation.

I would also make the argument that a majority of our laws are made to protect us or make our lives more risk free. Statistics show that only 735 people out of a million will commit murder depending on how you classify the definition. To use a pro 2A argument, we know criminals are not going to stop murdering people because there is a law against it. Punishing a murderer who doesn’t care about the murder laws is not going to help me after I was killed. So then, do we punish and incarcerate the murderer so that he/she doesn’t continue to murder someone else in the future? If you say yes, then that’s a law that is established to give the populace a more risk free existence. Each of us has their line in the sand where we believe the government is too intrusive, I’m glad we can discuss our differing views and, as Dawn said, help people new to our lifestyle see all sides of the argument.

2 Likes

Very true, @Shepherd. I’m going to guess that @Zee will agree that situational awareness and avoidance of bad situations are probably some of the most important things for our self-defense.

Did they say anything about false negatives? Not that I doubt that a huge majority of those people should not have bought guns, but I would be interested to see how many of the stopped purchases were due to error. (The government is involved so there’s bound to be some error :rofl:)

1 Like

For the good Guy our Girl. But the Bad Guy are Girl will still have CCW. The Law don’t work for them and care less about it.

1 Like

I 100% agree, I am not questioning @Zee’s qualifications, dedication, or passion for training. I know she is a top notch professional.

I would tend to agree with you about the government. Some of their stats. An Inspector General audit found that they have an almost 99% accuracy rate of those denied. In 88% of the cases they get an almost instant return at point of purchase. Now having said that, the audit did list specific dates that the ball was totally dropped and instances where non reporting from various sources, including internally, they dropped the ball. That 1 million figure I quoted earlier was convicted felons and domestic abusers stopped from actually purchasing a firearm by the background check process. That is out of over 51 million background checks. Working with the states, the FBI themselves declined 556,496 transactions. I don’t have how many state reporting agencies declined as a part of the background check at point of purchase.

2 Likes

@Shepherd, always happy to have the conversation with you - the level of respect is always high, even when we differ :smiley:

(*caveat: I didn’t dig hard for the most current stats because I’m at the office and our internet access prevents us from accessing sites that contain “unsafe” material, so the numbers below are perhaps not perfect, but I’m running with them… *)

Based on your stats, about 62,500 people a year are denied a purchase. to @Dawn’s point, I know several who have been incorrectly denied, but don’t have any stats, and I’ve never asked this rather personal question of anybody, so I can’t quantify the quality of those denial decisions.

Not sure how to use your 735 in a million number… is that per million ‘in their lifetime’? so about 4,000 murders per year. (328 million US citizens, with 735 per million murderers, with an average lifespan of 60 years). Of those 4,000 the most recent stat I could find said about 35% of those are firearms murders… so about 1400.

speculating that if that’s the case, we’re denying 62,500 people a year a firearm to theoretically save 1400 lives… and those lives might 1) have been saved if the victim had a firearm, or 2) might have been murdered anyway, but some other weapon would have been used.

For me, this is where it gets really murky as to the value of the background check… the numbers above show only a 2% leverage on reducing murders (62,500 denied versus 1400 murders per year, potentially but not certainly prevented… or possibly committed anyway with some other device)

Where I’m going with it is this: What if we took the money that is spent on background checks, federal databases, people to administer and run that system, et.al. and used it to offer free mental health services and other interventions such as anger management or relationship counseling or child and teen diversion programs… or even to improve the identification and prosecution of the murderers in unsolved cases (since repeat offenders is a real thing)… what would our % leverage be?

The 62,500 to 1,400 ratio of 2% indicates to me that we’re not getting very effective use of our money and it could be used better. To add to that picture, the other 98% of the restricted folks weren’t likely to become murderers anyway (according to the murderers-per-million stat you provided, if I used it correctly)… and that goes to support my contention that most of these kind of laws end up mostly to punish the uninvolved.

I know that there’s a lot of “what if” in here… and that the available stats may not be accurate given that stats about firearms are particularly vulnerable to distortion, cherry-picking, and manipulation. It’s not possible to predict what leverage that money would provide if it were used differently. I’m just skeptical about presenting a single statistic (like the number of denials over a 16 year period) without a full understanding of what that actually means (like how many of those were false denials, if there are time-relevant trends, if the people denied were repeat-offenders or subsequently committed murders anyway, etc.).

And yes, absolutely there are many other factor that come into play (training, home security, and all the rest). That said, firearms are the great equalizer in self defense, and there is no doubt in my mind that some folks have lost that battle because they were denied the tool they needed to succeed. How many? I don’t know. But I think we really should be looking for ways to punish the uninvolved less, and directly address the perpetrators more, and to spend our money where it most directly intersects with the actual problem - that 2%, not the 98%.

They only work to deter, they don’t stop anyone that has ill intent and is committed.

It is a crime to lie on the 4473, it is a crime for an ineligible person to even attempt to purchase a firearm through an FFL or otherwise.

The ATF prosecutes less than .001% of those violations and then almost exclusively as an add on charge for someone facing a more serious charge.

If all of them were prosecuted they could be a strong deterrent and would actually prevent a lot of crimes but mostly it just slows those who are caught down a little because they can always get one on the street.

A good statistical analysis was done of guns recovered at crime scenes. Of those that could be Identified and traced about 96% of them if I remember right were stolen.

That leaves only 4% that were bought and possessed lawfully.

3 Likes

The failure to communicate between agencies always has been and remains a serious problem with the CBC system.

The church shooting in Sutherland Springs, TX a few years back showed just how serious the problem is. The gunman in that case had not just one, but three disqualifications on his record and none of them had been reported to NICS.

1 Like

We have about 9,000 homicides committed with a firearm annually and about 330,000,000 people so I’m not quite getting it either. Maybe I’m just tired.

Statisia puts the rate at 3.37:100,000 as of 2017.

1 Like

@Zee,

I am 100% in agreement that we need to address the mental health, anger management, counseling issues. I believe that is the true issue that needs to be addressed. I am in agreement that guns are a tool, not the issue. My point on murder was meant to address your point on people feeling like the government should give us a risk free life/environment. Maybe I interpreted what you were saying incorrectly. I thought you meant that background checks were born out of this ideal and as such was going to lead to all our rights being taken away. I was pointing out, using laws against murder, that a good portion of our laws are made with the intent of reducing risk to the population. Don’t read this as I’m in favor of giving up my rights. I think we need to constantly monitor and be ready to defend our rights.

Again, using some people’s argument against any and all gun laws, a criminal is going to get a gun even if there is a law against it (a murderer is going to kill someone, even if there is a law against it) so why enact laws that aren’t going to stop the criminal from getting a gun (so why enact laws that aren’t going to stop a murderer from killing)? Read through this discussion, that point is made over and over again, most recently (“they don’t stop anyone that has ill intent and is committed”) If we apply that logic to all laws, then why have laws in the first place. Laws against murder are laws targeted to giving us a more risk free society. I think we can all agree having laws that allow us to punish murderers is a positive aspect of our society. That is why I brought up murder not to point out how many lives have been saved by background checks.

As an aside, and I hesitate to bring this up because it detracts from the topic of the discussion, but when we say to an anti gun person or person who is in the middle but slightly against guns out of lack of experience, that a criminal is going to get a gun even if there is a law regulating them, that is when they leap to the argument of taking away all guns. We are placing them in a position where they think taking away guns is the solution to our argument. Their rationale being, that if we can’t control them with gun laws, totally taking away the gun will solve that problem. Yes, we know that it would be impossible to disarm America completely thus always having criminals with guns, but they don’t see the impossibility of that situation. Instead of arguing with them by saying the system has flaws and isn’t perfect we need to do away with it, argue that the system needs to be better which doesn’t mean more restrictive if that is the case.

My ultimate point, and maybe it is because of my LE background, is that background checks may not be perfect, but the reality is one million felons and abusers in a 16 year period were stopped at the point of sale, that’s not just one life. Start asking the indelicate question to those that complain about being denied at the point of sale, and if they answer honestly, maybe that will fill in some of the missing information. If we trashed all our imperfect systems in government, then we probably would ultimately end up abolishing our system of government. Just like we need to address the issue of mental health and fix that, we also can work on the background checks system and fix those problems.

4 Likes