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Should background checks be required for every gun sale?


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    While looking at things to change, I looked for statistics on rape in various countries. In those from which numbers are available, we can be proud - the US is close to a world leader in rapes/100,000 people. Now we could call for registration of the weapon or we might do well to consider the cause for that disgusting number. It might well relate to other types of violence. No kidding.



      Careful! A world leader? How many other nations are as forthcoming as the USA with crime statistics being that most lack a free press? I say this NOT to defend the incidence of sex crimes in this country but to illustrate how under reported and pervasive the crime of rape is in the world at large. In my opinion, there should be a ZERO tolerance policy for rape throughout the world with the assurance of swift justice.



        Yeah, I'm a bit sorry I made that post as a host of things could enter into the statistics so we get a highly inaccurate picture. Still, it is something that would bear looking at by a media wanting to improve things and our life here. Along that line, in a city where there were frequent shootings, the FBI numbers for that city were missing in the two years I checked. My suspicion is that leaders in a college town would not like it shown that it was a state leader in shootings so the numbers would be "lost".


      • Bingo, castration policy would do alot to drop the number quite promptly.

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    There is already a national registry to prevent a crime. It's called the Do Not Call List. Now, being on the list why do I still get about ten telemarketer calls a day? I reported many to the FCC and nothing ever happens. Has anybody heard of frequent, massive fines for breaking that law? My point is one of our big problems is failure of the "System" to enforce existing laws. The criminals laugh at them. Ok, ban all firearms and who will obey? Gee, all the criminals will scurry to the police station to turn theirs in? The criminals will register? We will pay the price for more bureaucracy and they can't even handle telemarketers.

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      They know they can't get criminals to abide. Gun control isn't about disarming criminals, it's about disarming everyone else. Unarmed civilians are easier to control.

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        My letter to Editor:
        There will be a host of hearings and committees and commissions in the near future about guns and violence and the killing of the innocent. These could be really productive if they weren’t all focused on finding some magic bullet in the form of some law that will stop such things as the Newtown and other shootings from happening again.
        Unfortunately, there is no magic law that will accomplish the desired goal. Laws can be passed banning all sorts of things and confiscating guns or whatever can harm the innocent. Start simple. Ban guns that have large magazines or ban large magazines. First, switching clips is fast so that ban would accomplish little. Second, if I had the motivation, I could make a large capacity magazine that would hold – name the number – rounds. Oh, then ban the weapon that would attach to the magazine. If motivated, I could make a fully auto firearm that would accept the magazine I make. Besides which, guns are only one thing that can hurt people. There are a slew of other more destructive means fairly readily available.
        Doing all of that I’m avoiding the real problem which is stopping people from wanting to harm the innocent – from getting a sense of power by the cowardly behavior. The goal should be to take effective action to stop the attraction of the senseless, cowardly action of not just events like Newtown but drive by shootings or any act where defenseless people are harmed.
        My somewhat biased opinion is that a primary culprit for those acts is the nature of media reporting. In the late ‘60s Life magazine did an article on the Hell’s Angels in which they told of how the group’s version of cool involved raping a woman on a bar counter. I overheard a group of Hell’s Angels wanabes talking about the article and “Hey, look what they think is cool”. Within a year, a number of that group assaulted and raped a girl and her boyfriend. It happened in the New Haven area.
        Now Life may not have been the catalyst for that rape but they sure were not a deterrent.
        Had the correct scorn been attached to the act, the odds of the emulation would have been far less.
        So while people scramble to make laws that will primarily inconvenience the law abiding and do little but make people feel good for doing something, think about what can be done to make any hurting of the innocent, something that will diminish the perpetrator in their and everybody’s eyes. That would be a real fix. Regulating ownership of anything to the law abiding does nothing except deny freedom to the innocent.



    James, going after the peaceful and law abiding has always been the MO of the left. It's the same way muggers go after the aged, infirm and presumably unarmed - the targets are easy and the chances of success are high. It's my theory that for the most part, the left consist mostly of a criminal minded element as well, not that they ever get get convicted of anything. And their view of real criminals is that they are useful in many ways and with whom many have found ways of doing business.

    Stalin slow worked and tortured to death his political opponents but gave roles in maintaining his oppressive system to real thieves, rapists and murderers.

    Make no mistake. Liberals view their political opponents and real criminals in exactly the same manner, and would implement corresponding treatments should the opportunities avail themselves.

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  • I have no problem with background checks on all gun sales/transfers ... as long as the data from those checks is kept private AND is not used to compile a database of legal gun owners in the country. Such a database could be used by the government to impose taxes or yearly licenses on gun owners, thus imposing an additional financial burden on gun owners. Taxation/licensing of this sort has been used in other countries to discourage and ultimately make unaffordable the ownership of firearms. The gun ban crowd are aware of and support the use of such techniques.



    Roger Clarke-Johnson:

    You didn't answer my question, so I'll repeat it:
    Can you quote which part of the 2nd amendment provides an exception subject to gov't oversight?

    I'd appreciate an answer to this question as the basis of any reply.

    I assert that I have the right supplied by the Constitution to own any weapon I want. Further, I assert that I, a human being have rights at least equal to the government's rights as their rights are provided by me and fellow humans. They can not possibly have rights superior to me as they get their rights from me. Therefore, simple logic dictates that I have as much RIGHT as the gov't has.

    If you can, using logic, refute my assertion.

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