Conservative pro-gun Senator demolishes arguments against background checks

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/04/12/conservative-pro-gun-senator-demolishes-arguments-against-background-checks/


Conservative pro-gun Senator demolishes arguments against background checks

Posted by Greg Sargent on April 12, 2013 at 12:11 pm


Senator Tom Coburn, a staunchly conservative Senator with impeccable “pro gun” credentials, has done us all a tremendous service: He has effectively demolished many of the arguments coming from the right against expanded background checks.

snip//

As a firm believer of the 2nd Amendment, I support the reasonable expansion of National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) checks into secondary and private markets for the purpose of keeping firearms out of the wrong hands … unlike retailers, we as private citizens have no tool to know if the purchasers of our weapons in secondary markets (such as gun shows, flea markets, and through internet advertisements) are on the prohibited list. [...]

To my colleagues that say any reform dealing with gun laws is an infringement on the 2nd Amendment, then I welcome a debate on your amendments to repeal the 1993 Brady Bill…If prohibited people are not going to comply with any law we pass, then why should Congress make an effort to improve the reporting of disqualifying records to NICS. The more than $1 billion in federal tax dollars spent on creating and maintaining the National Instant Criminal Background Check System is rendered useless when a prohibited purchaser can just as easily procure a firearm from a gun show or an internet marketplace without a NICs check as they can at gun stores.

And there you have it. One of the staunchest pro gun lawmakers in the Senate has just confirmed that background checks are good for law abiding gun sellers who don’t want to sell to prohibited people. He has just shown that the argument that expanding background checks is unconstitutional is completely incoherent unless you also believe the current background check system is unconstitutional and support repealing it.

He has knocked down one of the silliest arguments of all — “criminals won’t obey the law, and criminals won’t submit to background checks, so why expand them?” — by pointing out that if you believe this, it would be folly to support improving data sharing within the current system, as many Republicans do in lieu of expanding it. After all, why do that, if criminals won’t submit to background checks? And he’s knocked down that talking point by also pointing out that the very reason criminals can continue to avoid submitting to background checks — and continue disobeying the law by procuring guns as prohibited people — is that the loophole enables them to do so more easily.

Thank you, Senator.

[southernyankeebelle]

1. He is going to retire and not run again if I'm not mistaken. Sometimes we

just have to do things for the betterment of the country. Something has happened in america. It's lost it's heart. We use to care (and of course some still do) what happens to the least of our people.