LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATE



PUBLIC FORUM DEBATENovember 2017John F. Schunk, Editor“Resolved: The United States should require universal background checks for all gun sales and transfers of ownership.”Assignment: A slug is a short summary (less than 10 words) of the information contained on the card. “Slug” the cards based on your assigned side (Pro/Con) of November’s Public Forum Debate topic. Write your slug in big, bold-faced font.S-K PUBLICATIONSPO Box 8173Wichita KS 67208-0173PH 316-685-3201FAX 316-260-4976debate@ T. Hardy, HOWARD LAW JOURNAL, Spring 2015, LexisNexis Academic, p. 682. The exact number of firearms owned by Americans is unknown, but one estimate of ownership in 2009 was 310 million, of which about 36% are rifles, 28% are shotguns, and 37% are handguns. The number possessed is increasing, and at an accelerating rate: in 1986, just over 3.7 million civilian firearms were produced or imported into the U.S.; in 2012 over 13 million were._________________________________________Reuters, THE WASHINGTON POST, October 27, 2015, p. A2, LexisNexis Academic. The proliferation of firearms is one of the factors behind a rise in homicide rates in many U.S. cities this year, according to senior law enforcement officials at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Chicago.___________________________________Kelsey Warner, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, October 27, 2015, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. Senior law enforcement officials at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Chicago link access to firearms to an uptick in homicide rates across urban areas in the US this year._______________________________Heather Boerner, PHYSICIAN LEADERSHIP JOURNAL, September-October 2016, p. 36, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. The cost of gun violence goes beyond a medical center's bottom line. There are the deaths, of course--33,000 people a year, according to Mother Jones. About 80,000 people are injured by guns every year.__________________________________NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER, January 15, 2016, p. 22, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Over the last 10 years in the United States, more than 100,000 people have been killed as a result of gun violence--and millions more have been the victim of assaults, robberies and other crimes involving a gun. Mass shootings make headlines, but as Obama noted, gun violence "happens on the streets of Chicago every day."_____________________________________David Hemenway [Professor of Health Policy, Harvard U.], CRIME AND JUSTICE, 2016, LexisNexis Academic, pp. 201-202. The United States has a terrible gun violence problem. On an average day in 2014, over 300 Americans were shot and more than 90 died. The number of American civilian gun deaths in the twenty-first century (2000-2015) is greater than the sum of all US combat deaths in World War I plus World War II plus the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. The deaths from firearms represent only the tips of the icebergs; many more people are nonfatally injured from firearms than are killed. These injuries are often severe, resulting in lifelong disability from spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries, and other disabling morbidities._____________________David Hemenway [Professor of Health Policy, Harvard U.], CRIME AND JUSTICE, 2016, LexisNexis Academic, p. 202. Guns are used in crimes some 1,300 times per day (Bureau of Justice Statistics 2013). This is an undercount since it misses many gun intimidations including gun use to intimidate intimate partners (Hemenway and Azrael 2000; Hemenway, Miller, and Azrael 2000; Rothman et al. 2005).__________________________THE ECONOMIST, June 18, 2016, p. 78(US), Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. More than 30,000 people die in shootings in America each year; no other rich country suffers anywhere near that level of gun violence._____________________________David Hemenway [Professor of Health Policy, Harvard U.], CRIME AND JUSTICE, 2016, LexisNexis Academic, p. 202. The United States, an outlier compared to other developed countries, has many more firearms per capita, particularly handguns, and much weaker gun control laws (Gun []; Masters 2016) Almost all other developed countries have national gun license systems and gun storage and gun training requirements. The United States lacks the former, and the latter are not requirements in most states (Hemenway 2006; Gun ; Masters 2016). While the United States has average rates of nonlethal crime and violence (Hemenway 2006; van Dijk, van Kesteren, and Smit 2007), it has far higher rates of gun violence (Richardson and Hemenway 2011; Grinshetyn and Hemenway 2016).___________________________Heather Boerner, PHYSICIAN LEADERSHIP JOURNAL, September-October 2016, p. 36, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. According to an extensive investigation by the magazine Mother Jones, gun violence costs $6.8 billion every year in direct costs, such as medical care and public services like police and emergency response and court costs. But it also costs an additional $221 billion in indirect costs, largely in the form of lost productivity, for a total of $229 billion annually. That's more than the cost of obesity care in the United States._____________________________Adam P. Soloperto [Seton Hall Law School], SETON HALL LAW REVIEW, 2016, LexisNexis Academic, pp. 228-229. In 2010, gun violence cost United States taxpayers approximately $ 630 million in direct hospital care. A single murder has an estimated cost of $ 450,000. Each day, taxpayers foot the bill for approximately thirty-two gun homicides. Mental health care for those who have experienced the trauma of gun violence accounts for $ 410 million annually and would be higher if all who desired such care could afford it. The federal government spent $ 800 million to bolster school security in public schools. Collectively, the direct burden of gun violence on American taxpayers currently hovers around $ 230 billion.___________________________Jeffrey W. Swanson [Dept. of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Duke U.] et al., LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS, Spring 2017, p. 179, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. The 1994 Brady Law's requirement of point-of-purchase background checks for firearm sales from federally licensed dealers has long been the mainstay of federal and state efforts to prevent gun violence. This is arguably a necessary but insufficient policy approach. Wide variation in the operational criteria for gun restrictions across states, inconsistencies in local policies and practices that apply these criteria to individual cases, and major gaps in state authorities' reporting of gun-disqualifying records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), all contribute to inefficient identification of people who should not have guns.______________________ Jon S. Vernick [Co-Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research] et al., JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Spring 2017, p. S98, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. However, federal law does not require a background check when a gun is purchased from someone who is not a licensed gun dealer. People prohibited from purchasing firearms may not legally acquire guns under any circumstances, but when no check is required to verify their status, there is nothing to enforce the prohibition.________________________________Jon S. Vernick [Co-Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research] et al., JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Spring 2017, p. S98, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Under federal law, anyone who buys a gun from a licensed firearm dealer must undergo an instant criminal background check. The check is designed to determine if the prospective buyer fits any criteria that prohibit purchase or possession of firearms, including a prior felony conviction, certain domestic violence misdemeanors, unlawful use of controlled substances, or, inter alia, commitment to a mental institution.______________________________________ Gabrielle Giffords [former member, U.S. House of Representatives], THE WASHINGTON POST, January 8, 2016, p. A19, LexisNexis Academic. People who are in the business of selling guns can avoid the current requirement to conduct background checks on their buyers by claiming not to be gun dealers. Go to a gun show, for example, and in booths right next to licensed gun dealers whose customers have to undergo background checks, you will see others who operate outside of the rules, selling dozens or hundreds of the same guns each year without background checks.________________________________Meghan Rosen, SCIENCE NEWS, May 14, 2016, p. 16, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. "I don't think anybody was really shocked," Webster [Johns Hopkins U.] says. After all, Brady had a gaping hole: It didn't require background checks for guns bought from private sellers (including those at gun shows). The loophole neutered Brady: People who didn't want a background check could simply find a willing private seller. That's just too easy, Webster says: It's like letting people decide whether they want to go through the metal detector at the airport.____________________________________Michael D. Shear, THE NEW YORK TIMES, January 6, 2016, p. A12, LexisNexis Academic. Federal law already requires that anyone “engaged in the business” of selling guns must be licensed and must conduct background checks on every purchase. The problem is that many sellers at gun shows and on firearms websites claim to be hobbyists who are exempt from those requirements. People who purchase guns from those sellers are not subject to criminal background checks._____________________________________Jon S. Vernick [Co-Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research] et al., JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Spring 2017, p. S98, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Just as commerce in many consumer goods has moved online, there is now a thriving trade in firearms conducted on thousands of websites, much of it between unlicensed sellers. In a series of investigations of online gun markets, including , one of the largest online gun markets with over half a million unique gun ads listed by unlicensed sellers each year, Everytown for Gun Safety showed that between four and ten percent of would-be online buyers are prohibited by federal or state law from possessing firearms due to prior felony or domestic violence convictions or active domestic violence restraining orders, but were shopping for guns anyway. That share is four to fifteen times higher than the share of prohibited buyers blocked by the background check system at licensed dealers in the states examined._____________________________________Patrik Jonsson, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, January 5, 2016, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. But the rules as written by Congress create a market for those who can't pass a federal background check. The loophole is a major one: Some 250,000 firearms a year are sold on the website without background checks, according to the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.____________________________________Reuters, THE WASHINGTON POST, October 27, 2015, p. A2, LexisNexis Academic. Acknowledging the power of the gun lobby and the reluctance of Congress to enact stricter gun laws, the police chiefs told a news conference that they were not anti-gun but were in favor of keeping weapons out of the hands of people with criminal backgrounds. Current rules on background checks apply to licensed dealers, but up to 40 percent of firearms sales involve private parties or gun shows and do not require checks, the chiefs said.______________________________Kelsey Warner, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, October 27, 2015, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. Licensed dealers are already required to perform background checks, but the regulation does not apply to private sales or gun shows, which account for up to 40 percent of gun purchases, according to the [police] chiefs.__________________________________STATES NEWS SERVICE, April 4, 2017, pNA, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. "When background checks are used, they keep guns out of the hands of people we all agree shouldn't have guns. It is estimated that four out of ten gun buyers do not go through a background check when purchasing a firearm-meaning those with criminal records can easily bypass the system. As government officials it is our responsibility to protect our citizens, and when it comes to gun violence we must do more. I will continue to push for action and support efforts to reduce gun violence which includes keep our background databases current," said King [U.S. House of Representatives]._______________________________________Jon S. Vernick [Co-Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research] et al., JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Spring 2017, p. S98, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. The crucial contribution that background checks make to public safety and health plays out across the country as people prohibited from purchasing firearms, who would have failed background checks at licensed gun dealers, are nevertheless able to buy firearms from unlicensed sellers and then perpetrate crimes.____________________________Jon S. Vernick [Co-Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research] et al., JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Spring 2017, p. S98, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Since 1994, prohibited people have attempted to purchase firearms from licensed dealers nearly three million times but were stopped by background checks. In light of this, common sense suggests that offering these persons an alternative method to buy firearms without background checks will pose an elevated risk to public safety. A variety of data corroborate this.____________________________Jon S. Vernick [Co-Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research] et al., JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Spring 2017, p. S98, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Surveys of people incarcerated for crimes involving handguns show that more than three-quarters obtained their firearms from a person not required to conduct a background check under federal law--whether with an acquaintance or "street" source.______________________Nathan Comp, THE PROGRESSIVE, April 2016, p. 19, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. A system of universal background checks, in states that have adopted these, requires that even in sales between individuals, a check must be performed by a federally licensed dealer, for a small fee, before a sale can occur._________________________Editorial, USA TODAY, June 21, 2016, p. 7A, LexisNexis Academic. These spineless lawmakers voted against advancing a commonsense measure to expand background checks to virtually all sales of guns, not just those sold by federally licensed dealers. The existing gap allows buyers who purchase from private sellers at gun shows, online or from newspaper ads to simply avoid the federal background check system. That system, run by the FBI, is efficient for buyers: More than nine of 10 gun buyers get a yes or no within minutes. And the system is effective: It has denied guns to 2.4 million prospective buyers since it was created in 1994, many of them felons.____________________________Lisa Rein, THE WASHINGTON POST, January 11, 2016, p. A11, LexisNexis Academic. Cratty [FBI spokeswoman] said the workload of the background-check system has increased steadily since the database was created in 1998 with December 2015 being the highest month on record for background checks. In addition to hiring more staff, the agency is modernizing the system's technology to handle expedited processing, Cratty said, so the FBI can work with "federal, state, local and tribal partners to gather more complete criminal and mental health records."__________________________Michael D. Shear, THE NEW YORK TIMES, January 6, 2016, p. A12, LexisNexis Academic. The Social Security Administration will begin looking at how to link mental health records in its system with the criminal background check data. The Department of Health and Human Services is clarifying that health privacy rules do not bar states from reporting mental health records to the background check system._________________________Jon S. Vernick [Co-Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research] et al., JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Spring 2017, p. S98, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. . At the time of passage of the [Colorado] law, even during a period of record-high gun sales, CBI conducted few checks for sales by unlicensed sellers outside of gun shows. But since enactment, the number has steadily increased, and by June 2015, background checks conducted for unlicensed transfers at sites other than gun shows outnumbered those at gun shows seven to one. This suggests unlicensed sellers increasingly require background checks of their buyers before completing their sales.Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 4, 2017, p. A24, LexisNexis Academic. Under the plan, private sellers must use licensed gun dealers to screen potential buyers through the F.B.I.'s National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Mr. Laxalt [attorney general of Nevada] issued an opinion in December declaring that the requirement was unenforceable. He based his decision on a letter sent by the F.B.I. that month saying that it would not process the background checks for private gun sales in Nevada because the state has a longstanding agreement with the federal government to do its own checks through its Department of Public Safety. (Nevada is one of 12 states with such an arrangement with the F.B.I.) This rationale for thwarting the will of Nevada voters comes from a man who not only campaigned against the proposal but later praised the N.R.A. at the organization's annual convention in April for fighting sensible gun-safety laws. The rationale is also specious. There are nine other states, whose example Nevada could follow, in which background checks are divided between a state agency and the F.B.I. For example, Florida's Department of Law Enforcement conducts background checks for most gun sales by dealers in that state but pawnshops are allowed to use the F.B.I.David Hemenway [Professor of Health Policy, Harvard U.], CRIME AND JUSTICE, 2016, LexisNexis Academic, pp. 215-216. Extending criminal background checks to all transactions should help reduce the transfer of firearms to clearly illegal individuals. Ten states containing about one-third of the US population, including California, New York, and Pennsylvania, already require background checks at the point of firearm transfer; universal background checks are clearly feasible. It makes sense for some transfers to be exempt. California exempts transfers between spouses and vertical immediate family members (e.g., from a grandparent) and temporary transfers such as infrequent and short-term loans between friends (Wintemute 2013b).Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 10, 2016, p. A20, LexisNexis Academic. In Maine and Nevada, referendums on the November ballot would require background checks for all gun sales, commercial and private, with a few exceptions, such as for transfers between family members. Both states have vibrant and longstanding gun cultures, and yet polls show a solid majority of voters support the initiatives. The N.R.A. opposes them. If the measures in Maine and Nevada pass, universal background checks on handgun sales will be the law in 20 states and the District of Columbia, covering half of all Americans.Kurtis Lee, LOS ANGELES TIMES, October 3, 2017, p. A12, LexisNexis Academic. Last year, voters in the state [Nevada] narrowly passed Question 1, an initiative that required most private buyers and sellers of guns to conduct a background check through a licensed dealer. Millions of dollars from national groups supporting and opposing the law poured into the state. The initiative, which passed 50.4% to 49.5%, mandated that private-party gun sales -- with a few exceptions, such as transfers between family members -- be subject to a federal background check through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which is administered by the FBI.Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 4, 2017, p. A24, LexisNexis Academic. But it has been shown that requiring checks on private sales of guns, such as at gun shows and over the internet, makes it harder for felons and other prohibited people, like those who have been committed to mental institutions and drug addicts, to buy firearms. It is a common-sense gun-safety policy that most Americans and most gun owners have long supported.Jon S. Vernick [Co-Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research] et al., JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Spring 2017, p. S98, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. These data show that the expansion of the state's background check system [Colorado] has made it more difficult for some high-risk people to acquire guns. In the first two years after passage of HB 1229, CBI conducted 29,634 background checks for unlicensed sales of firearms. Over that period, 393 sales from unlicensed sellers were denied and upheld, including to people convicted of assault or sexual assault, people under restraining orders, and people prohibited due to mental illness or mental impairment. The number of checks conducted for unlicensed sales has increased since the law's passage.Brian Doherty, REASON, February 2016, p. 32, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. A June 2015 study by Daniel Webster and three colleagues for the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research earned positive press for claiming that the tougher laws Connecticut passed in 1995 (requiring a background check and a permit for any gun purchase from any source) lowered the state's gun murder rate by 40 percent.Elizabeth Esty [U.S. House of Representatives], STATES NEWS SERVICE, April 5, 2017, pNA, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. "In Connecticut, the number of statewide homicides dropped to 53 in 2016, the lowest number in recent history," said Ron Pinciaro, the Executive Director of CT Against Gun Violence. "No single law has been more instrumental in keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people than the Brady Background check bill. And no bill has been more significant in adding to the effectiveness of the Brady bill than the NICS Improvement Act, which allowed federal funds to go to states in order to improve the quality and quantity of records sent by states into the NICS record database. Providing federal funds so the states can continue to improve the number and quality of records in the database must be a top priority for Congress to help in reducing gun deaths and injuries in our country."Jon S. Vernick [Co-Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research] et al., JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Spring 2017, p. S98, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Connecticut is one of the newest states to enact a permit-to-purchase law, in 1995. An evaluation using somewhat different methods than the Missouri study indicated that enactment of Connecticut's law was associated with a 40% reduction in the firearm homicide rate through 2005, with no effect on non-firearm homicides.Meghan Rosen, SCIENCE NEWS, May 14, 2016, p. 16, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Missouri and Connecticut have staked out opposite ends of the gun law spectrum. Connecticut didn't require handgun buyers to get a permit until 1995. Missouri had a tough law on the books, but repealed it in 2007. The states' laws have flip-flopped, making for a fascinating natural experiment on gun laws' effects on gun violence. The states "had mirror image policy changes, and mirror image results," says Daniel Webster, a health policy researcher at Johns Hopkins University. Flipping the laws was associated with 15 percent fewer gun suicides in Connecticut and 16 percent more in Missouri, a statistical analysis by Webster and colleagues, published last year in Preventive Medicine, estimated. Similar analyses by Webster in 2014 and 2015 indicated a 40 percent reduction in Connecticut gun homicide numbers, and an 18 percent rise in Missouri. Jon S. Vernick [Co-Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research] et al., JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Spring 2017, p. S98, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. States with laws requiring background checks of all buyers are unevenly distributed throughout the U.S., with a greater density of these laws in the northeast and western states. That geographic distribution became even more skewed in 2007 when Missouri repealed its longstanding permit-to-purchase law. An evaluation of Missouri's repeal showed that it was associated with a 25% increase in annual firearm homicides, or an additional 68 homicides per year through 2010. These changes occurred at the same time that the national firearm homicide rate declined 5.5% and the rate in the eight states bordering Missouri fell 2.2%. Missouri's repeal was not, however, associated with any change in homicides committed with other weapons (or no weapon). This is important because if such a change had been observed, one might suspect that some other factor, other than the repeal, was affecting homicide MONWEAL, January 8, 2016, p. 5, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. . More generally, other developed countries with fewer guns and tighter gun-control laws have much lower rates of both homicide and suicide. Likewise, studies have shown that, here in America, states and municipalities with more gun restrictions have fewer gun-related deaths.THE ECONOMIST, June 18, 2016, p. 78(US), Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. An analysis published in 2014, for example, using detailed county-level data assembled by the National Research Council, a government-funded body, suggested that laws that allow people to carry weapons are associated with a substantial rise in the incidence of assaults with a firearm. It also found evidence that such laws might also lead to increases in other crimes, like rape and robbery. A recent survey of 130 studies concluded that strict gun-control laws do indeed reduce deaths caused by firearms. Other studies have reached similar conclusions.STATES NEWS SERVICE, September 15, 2017, pNA, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Research to be presented at the 2017 American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference and Exhibition finds that stricter gun laws are associated with lower firearm injury rates in children. New research shows regions of the United States that have the strictest gun laws also have the lowest rates of childhood firearm injuries, with the Northeast region of the U.S. having the lowest rates of child injuries due to guns.STATES NEWS SERVICE, September 15, 2017, pNA, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. "Our research confirms that regions that have stricter gun laws have a significantly lower rate of firearm injuries among children," said Monika Goyal, MD, MSCE, an assistant professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at Children's National Health System and The George Washington University. Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, January 17, 2016, p. SR-10, LexisNexis Academic. While the gun violence debate often focuses on mass shootings of strangers, hundreds of Americans are fatally shot every year by spouses or partners. In 2013, 61 percent of women killed with guns were killed by husbands, ex-husbands or boyfriends. And in 57 percent of shootings in which four or more people were killed, one of the victims was the shooter's partner or family member, according to an analysis by the group Everytown for Gun Safety. Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, January 17, 2016, p. SR-10, LexisNexis Academic. Yet shortcomings in federal and state law allow many domestic abusers to have access to firearms, even after courts have determined that the abusers pose a threat to their partners.Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, January 17, 2016, p. SR-10, LexisNexis Academic. While a background check should prevent anyone prohibited from purchasing a firearm from doing so, federal law does not require private sellers to perform background checks. The results can be deadly: In 2012, a Wisconsin man subject to a domestic violence restraining order purchased a gun from a seller on the website and used it to kill his wife, two other women and himself. In her request for the restraining order, his wife had written, “His threats terrorize my every waking moment.”Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, January 17, 2016, p. SR-10, LexisNexis Academic. Between 2008 and 2012, states that required background checks on private sales had 46 percent fewer gun homicides of women by partners, adjusted for population, than states with no such requirement.THE ECONOMIST, June 18, 2016, p. 78(US), Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. An analysis published in 2015 in the Annual Review of Public Health noted that state laws banning possession of a gun by individuals under a restraining order for domestic violence reduce the incidence of "intimate partner homicide" by 10%. The same analysis reports that firearm homicide rates rose by 25% in the five years after Missouri repealed its law requiring permits to purchase a gun, even as the national rate nationwide fell.Meghan Rosen, SCIENCE NEWS, May 14, 2016, p. 16, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Blocking domestic violence offenders' access to guns seems to cut down on homicides, for example. From 1982 to 2002, states with restraining order laws that bar offenders from buying guns had rates of intimate partner homicide that were 10 percent lower than in states lacking the laws, researchers reported in 2006 in Evaluation Review.Meghan Rosen, SCIENCE NEWS, May 14, 2016, p. 16, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. In 2010, Webster [Johns Hopkins U.] and colleagues reported similar results at the city level. He and colleagues tracked intimate partner homicides from 1979 to 2003 in 46 U.S. cities. Those that made it hard for people with domestic violence restraining orders to get guns had 19 percent fewer intimate partner homicides compared with cities with less stringent laws, the team reported in Injury Prevention. "These are pretty consistent findings," Webster says. Those state policies seem to be working.Aaron J. Kivisto et al., THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, July 2017, p. 1068, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. State-level firearm legislation was significantly associated with lower rates of fatal police shootings (incidence rate ratio = 0.961; 95% confidence interval = 0.939, 0.984). When we controlled for sociodemographic factors, states in the top quartile of legislative strength had a 51% lower incidence rate than did states in the lowest quartile. Laws aimed at strengthening background checks, promoting safe storage, and reducing gun trafficking were associated with fewer fatal police shootings.Reuters, THE WASHINGTON POST, October 27, 2015, p. A2, LexisNexis Academic. Police chiefs from across the country called Monday for universal background checks for firearms purchases, saying opinion polls consistently show that most Americans support such restrictions.Kelsey Warner, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, October 27, 2015, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. Aware of the influence of the gun lobby, and inaction in Congress, police chiefs from across the United States are demanding universal background checks for firearms purchases, citing support from the majority of American people in opinion polls.Kelsey Warner, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, October 27, 2015, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. Calling it "the simplest thing in the world," Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, and his colleagues?told reporters at a news conference that they were not anti-gun, they just want to prevent weapons from falling into the hands of those with criminal backgrounds.Meghan Rosen, SCIENCE NEWS, May 14, 2016, p. 16, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. In 2007, Hemenway [Harvard U.] and colleagues examined gun ownership rates and statewide suicide data from 2000 to 2002. People in states with a high percentage of gun owners (including Wyoming, South Dakota and Alaska) were almost four times as likely to kill themselves with guns as people living in states with relatively few gun owners (such as Hawaii, Massachusetts and Rhode Island), the researchers reported in the Journal of Trauma Injury, Infection and Critical Care.Meghan Rosen, SCIENCE NEWS, May 14, 2016, p. 16, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. A 2014 review of 16 such studies, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, came to the same conclusion, again: Access to guns meant higher risk of suicide. "The evidence is unassailable," says Stanford University criminologist John Donohue. "It's as strong as you can get."Michael D. Anestis & Joye C. Anestis, THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH, October 2015, p. 2049, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Using previous research, we examined the impact of 4 handgun laws (waiting periods, universal background checks, gun locks, and open carrying regulations) on suicide rates. We used publicly available databases to collect information on statewide laws, suicide rates, and demographic characteristics for 2013. Each law was associated with significantly lower firearm suicide rates and the proportion of suicides resulting from firearms. In addition, each law, except for that which required a waiting period, was associated with a lower overall suicide rate.Jon S. Vernick [Co-Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research] et al., JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Spring 2017, p. S98, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Gun purchase laws also affect rates of violence beyond homicides. Most deaths by gunfire in the U.S. are suicides. Research found a 15.4% reduction in firearm suicide rate associated with Connecticut's enactment of a permit-to-purchase law, and a 16.1% increase in firearm suicide rate following Missouri's repeal.Philip Casey Grove [U. of Arizona Law School], ARIZONA LAW REVIEW, 2017, LexisNexis Academic, p. 775. Aurora. Newtown. Tucson. San Bernardino. Charleston. Orlando. Dallas. Within America, the message of this list is grimly clear: each of these places has experienced the terror and tragedy of a public mass shooting. The Mass-Shooting Era is in full swing, and no region of the United States has been left untouched.William Brennan, THE ATLANTIC, January-February 2017, p. 26, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. From 2000 to 2006, an average of six "active-shooter incidents" took place in the United States each year; in the following seven years, that number nearly tripled--with one occurring, on average, every three weeks. One of the best ways to prevent mass shootings, experts say, is to regulate who can buy and use a gun.Editorial, USA TODAY, June 21, 2016, p. 7A, LexisNexis Academic. You don't have to go far to find shootings where the killers exploited this well-known loophole, most notoriously the 1998 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, where the students who killed 13 and then shot themselves got weapons through a friend who bought them from an unlicensed seller at a gun show.Wolfgang Stroebe [Dept. of Social & Organizational Psychology, U. of Groningen, Netherlands] et al., PLoS ONE, August 11, 2017, pNA, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. After all, guns are of little use in mass shootings: experts warn against drawing a gun in an active shooter incident, because the police-or other concealed-carry gun owners-might mistake a would-be hero for the active shooter and kill him or her.Editorial, USA TODAY, June 21, 2016, p. 7A, LexisNexis Academic. Would expanding background checks be a panacea? Of course not. The Orlando killer, a security guard, was able to purchase his guns legally. But no one should buy into the absurd notion, pushed by the gun lobby, that to be worthwhile a measure must demonstrate that it could have prevented the most recent atrocity or all mass murders.Jon S. Vernick [Co-Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research] et al., JOURNAL OF LAW, MEDICINE & ETHICS, Spring 2017, p. S98, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. One mechanism by which background checks may affect homicide rates is through their effect on interstate gun trafficking. An analysis of ATF data showed that states that do not require background checks for all handgun sales via a permit-to-purchase law are three times more likely to "export" crime guns (i.e., be the source state of guns later recovered and traced by the police) than states that do.SK/P09.02) Meghan Rosen, SCIENCE NEWS, May 14, 2016, p. 16, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. And federal laws aren't particularly good at keeping guns away from mentally ill people. A 1968 law prohibits gun sales to a narrow slice of people with a history of mental illness, but it's easy for others to slip through the cracks. Even people the law does target can end up with guns--because states don't have to report mental health records to the FBI's national background-check system. "You've got tons of records that would disqualify people from buying guns," Swanson [medical sociologist, Duke U.] says, but they don't necessarily make it into the system.STATES NEWS SERVICE, April 4, 2017, pNA, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. "The safety of Americans relies on keeping guns out of the hands of people who should not have them--and we do that by making sure their names are in our background check system," said Thompson [U.S. House of Representatives]. "Studies have shown there are huge backlogs of names still waiting to be entered into NICS. These people are criminals and domestic abusers whom the law has found should not have a gun--but they may still be able to get one if they can pass a background check. We must make sure states have the resources needed to keep our background check system current."Matthew Gamsin [U. of Southern California Law School], SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW POSTSCRIPT, 2015, LexisNexis Academic, p. 51. There is a consensus that effective gun control depends in large part on the maintenance of a database of ineligible individuals that is accessible by persons involved in gun sales and by federal and state authorities. The failure of the NICS system has been well documented, but the government's attempt to improve state reporting by providing additional funding "to a subset of states through the NICS Improvement Act . . . led to significantly increased reporting of civil commitment and other mental health records from funded states." Experts recommend expanding such funding and amending current federal law to require background checks not only from licensed dealers, but "when a firearm is purchased from a private, unlicensed seller."Elizabeth Esty [U.S. House of Representatives], STATES NEWS SERVICE, April 5, 2017, pNA, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Background checks have prevented more than 2.6 million gun sales nationwide since they began in 1994, keeping firearms out of the hands of felons, fugitives, domestic abusers, and other people who may be a danger to themselves or others. Unfortunately, NICS - the database used to determine whether a prospective buyer is eligible to purchase a gun - is missing information. As a result, people who otherwise should not be able to pass a background check by law can slip through the cracks and buy a firearm.SK/P10.01) Jonathan Lowy & Kelly Sampson [both, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence], GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF LAW & PUBLIC POLICY, Winter 2016, p. 187, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. This expansive conception of the Second Amendment is not supported by Supreme Court precedent. District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. City of Chicago recognized only "the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home," and emphasized that while total handgun bans are "off the table," most and perhaps all other gun laws remain constitutional--including bans on carrying concealed weapons in public.SK/P10.02) Areto A. Imoukhuede [Professor of Law, Nova Southeastern U.], SETON HALL LAW REVIEW, 2017, LexisNexis Academic, p. 354. Justice Scalia wrote for the majority as follows: “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose. For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues.”Eric M. Ruben [Fellow, Brennan Center for Justice, NYU School of Law] & Darrell A.H. Miller [Professor of Law, Duke U.], LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS, Spring 2017, p. 1, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Heller and McDonald represent a significant shift in the constitutional landscape for the right to keep and bear arms, but in one of the most cited passages in both opinions the Court also emphasized that the right is not unlimited, and that governments maintain broad regulatory authority. The right announced in Heller and McDonald, the Court instructed, "[should not be taken to] cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as 'prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,' 'laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.'"Areto A. Imoukhuede [Professor of Law, Nova Southeastern U.], SETON HALL LAW REVIEW, 2017, LexisNexis Academic, p. 345. The Heller decision of 2008 and the McDonald decision of 2010 reframed Second Amendment doctrine as primarily a self-defense concern - an individual liberty. This libertarian perspective on the right to bear arms recasts it as a freedom with virtually no relationship to the Second Amendment's prefatory clause.Areto A. Imoukhuede [Professor of Law, Nova Southeastern U.], SETON HALL LAW REVIEW, 2017, LexisNexis Academic, p. 347. Before 2008, the Court's interpretation of the Second Amendment did not include an individual right to bear arms, but rather a collective right. This collective right was framed in terms of the "well-regulated militia" that is referenced in the first few words of the Amendment. This portion of the Amendment, which is frequently referred to as the prefatory clause, was universally recognized as important. It was so well-recognized that even outlaws and domestic terrorist organizations sought to legitimize themselves by clothing themselves in the language of the prefatory clause's qualified protection by claiming to be "militia" or militia groups.Areto A. Imoukhuede [Professor of Law, Nova Southeastern U.], SETON HALL LAW REVIEW, 2017, LexisNexis Academic, p. 360. Scalia's holding has been duly criticized even by conservative scholars, including Judge Richard Posner. Posner writes that Scalia cheated originalism principles, using instead "faux originalism." Posner explains that Justice Stevens' dissent was a better argument because "the motivation for the Second Amendment was only to protect the state militias from being disarmed by the federal government," and the text of the Amendment as drafted does not enshrine an individual's right to possess a gun for recreational or self-defense purposes.Eric M. Ruben [Fellow, Brennan Center for Justice, NYU School of Law] & Darrell A.H. Miller [Professor of Law, Duke U.], LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS, Spring 2017, p. 1, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Legal commentators in the first half of the twentieth century came to a fairly uniform conclusion: the Second Amendment protected a collective, not individual, right. The right was primarily concerned with the maintenance of a "well regulated Militia." Thus, the Second Amendment would not prevent the federal government from passing laws targeting the possession and use of guns in crime. A 1915 essay by Maine Supreme Court Justice Lucilius A. Emery in the Harvard Law Review summarized the basis for this position, noting that "the right guaranteed is not so much to the individual for his private quarrels or feuds as to the people collectively for the common defense against the common enemy, foreign or domestic."Adam P. Soloperto [Seton Hall Law School], SETON HALL LAW REVIEW, 2016, LexisNexis Academic, p. 235. What is not clear from the historical record, however, is whether colonial Americans kept weaponry for purposes outside of service to the militia. While many owned guns as a means of fulfilling their statutory duty to the militia, there is little evidence of the almost fanatical relationship with firearms that exists in America today. Carrying weaponry of any kind in public was outlawed by some state legislatures. In the early nineteenth century, it was illegal to discharge a weapon within the recorded limits of any Ohio town. Laws that heavily regulated firearms usage were enforced during the colonial era, so it is likely that the founders understood firearm ownership to be within the purview of government regulation.Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 10, 2016, p. A20, LexisNexis Academic. The vast majority of Americans -- about nine in 10 -- support reasonable, common-sense gun regulations. The numbers are only slightly lower among gun owners and members of the National Rifle Association. And yet, year after year, lawmakers in Congress and in statehouses across the country, all beholden to the gun lobby, act as if the opposite were true. They reject even mild, sensible laws -- such as background checks and bans on gun ownership by domestic abusers or the mentally ill -- that would help reduce the country's staggering toll of gun violence.Elizabeth Esty [U.S. House of Representatives], STATES NEWS SERVICE, April 5, 2017, pNA, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Over the last four years, Quinnipiac has repeatedly polled the public on their support for background checks. Support has never fallen below 88 percent. The most recent poll, in June 2016, found support to be at 93 percent.NATIONAL CATHOLIC REPORTER, January 15, 2016, p. 22, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. An October CBS News/New York Times poll found 92 percent of Americans--including 87 percent of Republicans--favor background checks for all gun buyers. A Quinnipiac University survey of 1,140 registered voters had similar results in December. In every one of 15 subgroups, including Republicans, men, gun owners and rural residents, at least 84 percent supported background checks for sales at gun shows or online.Patrik Jonsson, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, January 5, 2016, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. Almost 9 out of 10 Americans would like to see rules that keep people with mental illness from buying a gun, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. Ninety-three percent want stronger background checks, Quinnipiac found, and 55 percent say it's too easy to buy a gun in the US MONWEAL, January 8, 2016, p. 5, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. A recent study published in Preventive Medicine found that more than 80 percent of the public, including gun owners, are in favor of background checks for all gun sales (there are currently exceptions for gun shows and private sellers).CON ____________________________________SK/C01.01) Heather Boerner, PHYSICIAN LEADERSHIP JOURNAL, September-October 2016, p. 36, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. The irony, said Harvard's Hemenway [Professor of Health Policy, Harvard U.], is that, although the number of mass shootings has gone up, the number of gun deaths in the U.S. overall in recent years has dropped. "Over the last 20 years, firearm assaults are going down, because crime is going down," he said. "So homicides are going down, which means that gun homicides are going down."_________________________________________Brian Doherty, REASON, February 2016, p. 32, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. This simple point--that America is awash with more guns than ever before, yet we are killing each other with guns less than ever before--undermines the narrative that there is a straightforward, causal relationship between increased gun prevalence and gun homicide. Even if you fall back on the conclusion that it's just a small number of owners stockpiling more and more guns, it's hard to escape noticing that even these hoarders seem to be harming fewer and fewer people with their weapons, casting doubt on the proposition that gun ownership is a political crisis demanding action.___________________________________David French, NATIONAL REVIEW, February 20, 2017, p. 36, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Gun deaths are lowest in the population that owns the most guns. Fully 41 percent of white households report owning a gun, compared with only 19 percent of black households. Among white Americans, there are more guns, but there's less crime. Among black Americans, there are fewer guns, but there's more crime._____________________________________Brian Doherty, REASON, February 2016, p. 32, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Another recent well-publicized study trying to assert a positive connection between gun laws and public safety was a 2013 JAMA Internal Medicine article by the Harvard pediatrics professor Eric W. Fleegler and his colleagues, called "Firearm Legislation and Firearm-Related Fatalities in the United States." It offered a mostly static comparison of the toughness of state gun laws (as rated by the gun control lobbyists at the Brady Center) with gun deaths from 2007 to 2010. "States with strictest firearm laws have lowest rates of gun deaths," a Boston Globe headline then announced. But once again, if you take the simple, obvious step of separating out suicides from murders, the correlations that buttress the supposed causations disappear. As John Hinderaker headlined his reaction at the Power Line blog, "New Study Finds Firearm Laws Do Nothing to Prevent Homicides."_____________________________________Wolfgang Stroebe [Dept. of Social & Organizational Psychology, U. of Groningen, Netherlands] et al., PLoS ONE, August 11, 2017, pNA, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. But even if one assumes that 600,000 Americans decided to buy guns following the Orlando shooting, it is unlikely that sampling from approximately 245 million adult Americans, we would have captured a sufficient proportion of those 600,000 individuals to find a significant difference in gun spending intentions. This suggests that for most Americans, this tragic event had no impact either on their fear of crime or their fear of stricter gun control measures. This would be rational, because, as mentioned earlier, the chance of falling victim to a mass shooting is minimal.Robert J. Cottrol [Professor of Law, George Washington U.] & George A. Mocsary [Asst. Professor of Law, Southern Illinois U.], GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF LAW & PUBLIC POLICY, Winter 2016, LexisNexis Academic, p. 45. There is a great deal of disagreement among experts about the effect of private firearm ownership on unlawful shootings and crime deterrence. The frequency of firearm accidents is miniscule when compared to deaths and injuries from other sources or to the size of the American population.Glenn Kessler, THE WASHINGTON POST, October 18, 2015, p. A5, LexisNexis Academic. In 2013, when the gun debate heated up after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., in late 2012, we closely examined the origin of the claim that 40 percent of gun sales are done without a background check. It's a stale figure, based on data about two decades old, although tantalizing new research may shed additional light on the issue.Glenn Kessler, THE WASHINGTON POST, October 18, 2015, p. A5, LexisNexis Academic. The Fact Checker in 2013 asked one of the study's co-authors, Jens Ludwig of the University of Chicago, to rerun the numbers, looking only at guns purchased on the secondary market. The result, depending on the definition: 14 percent to 22 percent were purchased without a background check. That's at least half the percentage cited by Clinton.) National Rifle Association, STATES NEWS SERVICE, July 28, 2017, pNA, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. One such "faux-tistic" is the claim that 40 percent of firearms sales occur without a background check. Despite this figure having been consistently discredited, it continues to show up in gun control arguments even after the researchers whose study was used as the basis of the claim rejected it as outdated and unreliable.National Rifle Association, STATES NEWS SERVICE, January 9, 2017, pNA, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. This week saw the publication of survey data compiled by Harvard Injury Control Research Center's Deborah Azrael, Matthew Miller, and Lisa Hepburn, that should finally lay to rest the long-debunked factoid that 40 percent of firearms sales occur without a background check. The report, titled, "Firearm Acquisition Without Background Checks: Results of a National Survey," and published in Annals of Internal Medicine, found that only 22 percent "of gun owners who reported obtaining their most recent firearm within the previous 2 years reported doing so without a background check."NATIONAL REVIEW, January 25, 2016, p. 14, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Unlicensed sales at gun shows are not a large source of firearms used in crimes; many gun shows keep FFL-holders on site to perform background checks; and online gun shops, which are licensed dealers, ship exclusively to other FFLs [licensed firearms dealers] in order to secure legal transfer. Many casual sellers do the same thing, because they have strong incentives to secure legal transfer of the firearms they sell.Chris Knox [Communications Director, The Firearms Coalition], USA TODAY, June 21, 2016, p. 7A, LexisNexis Academic. They might go to a gun show and look for an individual willing to sell a gun without going through a dealer, but gun shows tend to be thick with law enforcement. Few guns used in crime have been found to have come through a gun show.David French, NATIONAL REVIEW, February 20, 2017, p. 36, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. In other words, criminals aren't walking into gun shops or gun shows but rather are seeking weapons from people they know and trust--people who know full well that they're giving or selling a gun to someone who can't legally own it.Chris Knox [Communications Director, The Firearms Coalition], USA TODAY, June 21, 2016, p. 7A, LexisNexis Academic. The third issue with background checks is that they steal scarce law enforcement resources to execute paperwork without having any real effect. The National Instant Check System referred fewer than 4,000 checks for further investigation in 2011, out of over 140 million checks. Background checks sound so easy and straightforward, but in practice are more complex and less effective than anyone could hope.Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY, January 20, 2016, p. 1A, LexisNexis Academic. The surge of criminal background checks required of new gun purchasers has been so unrelenting in recent months that the FBI was forced to temporarily halt the processing of thousands of appeals from prospective buyers whose firearm purchase attempts were denied. Since October, the bureau's entire cadre of appeal examiners -- about 70 analysts -- was redeployed here to help keep pace with waves of incoming background investigations that continued through December when a record 3.3 million firearm sales were processed.Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY, January 20, 2016, p. 1A, LexisNexis Academic. The NICS system, mandated by Congress as part of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, has for nearly 20 years been a centerpiece of the government's effort to block criminals from obtaining firearms. The operation has largely struggled to keep pace with a steadily increasing number of firearm transfers, while maintaining databases of criminal and mental health records that rely solely on voluntary contributions from state and local authorities. Those records are crucial to determining whether prospective gun buyers are eligible to purchase firearms.Chris Knox [Communications Director, The Firearms Coalition], USA TODAY, June 21, 2016, p. 7A, LexisNexis Academic. The second problem with background checks is that they are based on history. In the United States we fortunately have no Pre-Crime Bureau, as envisioned in dystopic science fiction. We cannot reliably predict who will commit a crime.SK/C03.05) Jeffrey W. Swanson [Dept. of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Duke U.] et al., LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS, Spring 2017, p. 179, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Similarly, a substantial proportion of those at risk for committing violent crimes with guns do not have a record that would prohibit them from purchasing or possessing firearms.David Hemenway [Professor of Health Policy, Harvard U.], CRIME AND JUSTICE, 2016, LexisNexis Academic, pp. 212-213. Of course, most gun deaths are caused by someone who has a legal right to own a firearm. While there does not seem to have been a single study directly on this subject, probably the large majority of gun suicides and accidents involve legally owned firearms. It also appears that a good number of gun homicides are committed by individuals who could pass an NICS background check. Cook, Ludwig, and Braga (2005) found that the vast majority of homicide perpetrators in Chicago had long arrest records, but most did not have felony convictions. In other words, most killers, even in a place like Chicago, probably could have passed a federal Brady background check.Jeffrey W. Swanson [Dept. of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Duke U.] et al., LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS, Spring 2017, p. 179, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. An estimated nine percent of adults in the United States have problems with impulsive, angry behavior and have access to firearms at home; these are individuals who admit that they "break and smash things" when they get angry, and many of them would meet diagnostic criteria for a mental health problem such as a personality disorder. However, less than ten percent of these angry, impulsive, gun-possessing adults have ever been hospitalized for a mental health problem, and thus would never have lost their gun rights by dint of a mental-health-based restriction. One such angry individual was Craig Stephen Hicks, the legal owner of a cache of about a dozen firearms who, in a fit of irrational rage, shot three young Muslim people in the head in Chapel Hill, North Carolina in February 2015. Notably, properly conducted federal and state background check policies were insufficient to protect the public from Hicks.James B. Jacobs [Professor of Law, NYU] & Zoe A. Fuhr [Center for Research in Crime and Justice, NYU], ALBANY LAW REVIEW, Summer 2016, p. 1327, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. The most likely way for the police to identify a SAFE Act violator is to persuade a person arrested for an armed offense to name the person from whom he acquired the gun. (Prosecutors may be willing to make concessions to catch a major seller, but probably not to catch a casual seller.) Unfortunately for law enforcement, most often the gun crime arrestee does not know the name, especially the real name, of the person from whom he purchased the firearm. Even if he did know and still remembers the seller's real name and whereabouts, the person he identifies will almost certainly deny having made the unlawful sale. What proof is there? The current owner (the criminal defendant in this scenario) is highly unlikely to have a signed receipt.James B. Jacobs [Professor of Law, NYU] & Zoe A. Fuhr [Center for Research in Crime and Justice, NYU], ALBANY LAW REVIEW, Summer 2016, p. 1327, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. To a significant extent, compliance with the SAFE Act's universal background checking requirement depends upon prospective firearms sellers perceiving a significant risk of apprehension, prosecution and punishment for violating the law. However, the actual risk is negligible. Since January 2013 (when the SAFE Act became effective) until the end of June 2015, there was not a single arrest statewide for knowing failure to comply with the SAFE Act's universal background checking requirement.Jeffrey W. Swanson [Dept. of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Duke U.] et al., LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS, Spring 2017, p. 179, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. The sheer number of privately owned firearms already in existence in the United States--approximately 357,000,000 guns, by one government estimate--further limits the effectiveness of any policy that relies solely on stopping a risky person from acquiring a new gun.Jeffrey W. Swanson [Dept. of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Duke U.] et al., LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS, Spring 2017, p. 179, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Guns are extremely durable devices that many owners retain indefinitely and pass down through generations.James B. Jacobs [Professor of Law, NYU] & Zoe A. Fuhr [Center for Research in Crime and Justice, NYU], ALBANY LAW REVIEW, Summer 2016, p. 1327, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Given a firearms-prohibited person's many options for acquiring a gun, even under a licensing and universal background checking regime, it seems implausible that a strongly motivated individual would be unable to acquire one. Gun owners' rights advocates argue that criminals will always be able to get guns, especially professional and highly active criminals who need a gun to compel victim compliance and to protect themselves from criminal rivals.David French, NATIONAL REVIEW, February 20, 2017, p. 36, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. To compound the problem of non-enforcement, it's clear that criminals get most of their guns through illegal means. For example, a 2015 gun study by Duke and University of Chicago researchers found that Chicago criminals "obtain most of their guns from their social network of personal connections." In addition: "Rarely is the proximate source either direct purchase from a gun store, or theft. Only about 60 percent of guns in the possession of respondents were obtained by purchase or trade. Other common arrangements include sharing guns and holding guns for others."Chris Knox [Communications Director, The Firearms Coalition], USA TODAY, June 21, 2016, p. 7A, LexisNexis Academic. The first problem with background checks is that someone intending to break the law can easily evade the check. They can execute a "straw sale," by sending someone with a clean record to make the purchase.NATIONAL REVIEW, January 25, 2016, p. 14, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. While gun shows are not major sources of firearms used in crimes, straw buyers are. We already have strong laws against straw purchases, but they are barely enforced.James B. Jacobs [Professor of Law, NYU] & Zoe A. Fuhr [Center for Research in Crime and Justice, NYU], ALBANY LAW REVIEW, Summer 2016, p. 1327, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Just as the Brady Law is easily circumvented by firearms-prohibited individuals obtaining a gun by means of a straw purchaser or directly in the secondary market or black market, firearms-prohibited individuals can easily avoid the SAFE Act's universal background checking requirements by obtaining a gun from a family member, straw purchaser, black market dealer or private gun seller willing (perhaps for a premium) to ignore the background checking law.Jeffrey W. Swanson [Dept. of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Duke U.] et al., LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS, Spring 2017, p. 179, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Moreover, individuals at high risk of violence commonly have access to firearms at home, even if they would not qualify to buy a gun themselves, because they live in households with guns legally purchased by family members or others.David French, NATIONAL REVIEW, February 20, 2017, p. 36, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Moreover, if existing law isn't a deterrent, is there any evidence that additional measures, such as imposing background-check requirements on private sales, will deter a criminal's "social network" from handing him a gun? After all, it's already illegal to give the criminal a gun, and it's already illegal to put the illegally owned gun to its intended criminal use. Does the gun-control lobby really think that adding just one more statute will deter crime and prevent one gang member from giving his gun to another?Brian Doherty, REASON, February 2016, p. 32, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. "Sources of Guns to Dangerous People: What We Learn By Asking Them," by Philip Cook and colleagues, surveyed a set of jailed criminals in Cook County, Illinois. It found that they "obtain most of their guns from their social network of personal connections. Rarely is the proximate source either direct purchase from a gun store, or theft."Gabrielle Giffords [former member, U.S. House of Representatives], THE WASHINGTON POST, January 8, 2016, p. A19, LexisNexis Academic. The steps announced this week will narrow that gap by requiring anyone who sells a significant number of guns or operates like a commercial dealer to get a license and require each buyer to pass a criminal background check. Truly private sales, such as simply selling a gun to a neighbor or a friend, will not be affected.Meghan Rosen, SCIENCE NEWS, May 14, 2016, p. 16, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Again and again studies show that gun control policies just don't work, says economist John Lott, who has written extensively on the subject. Take background checks, he says, "Given that these laws are costly, you'd like to believe there's some evidence that they produce a benefit."Meghan Rosen, SCIENCE NEWS, May 14, 2016, p. 16, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. After Sandy Hook, San Bernardino and other high-profile mass shootings, people have been talking about what gun control laws, if any, actually work. Unfortunately, there's just not enough evidence to make strong conclusions about most laws, Hemenway [Harvard U.] says. In 2005, for example, a federal task force reviewed 51 studies of gun laws, mostly in the United States, and came up empty-handed. The task force couldn't say whether any one of the laws made much of a difference.Meghan Rosen, SCIENCE NEWS, May 14, 2016, p. 16, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. One major study published in JAMA in 2000 analyzed suicide and homicide data from 1985 to 1997 to evaluate the impact of the Brady Act, a 1994 federal law that requires background checks for people buying guns. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia already followed the law. So researchers compared suicide and homicide rates with those in the 32 states new to the law. If Brady curbed gun violence, those 32 states should see dips in deaths. That didn't happen (with one exception: Gun suicides in those states dropped in people age 55 and older--by about 1 per 100,000 people).Mark Gius [Dept. of Economics, Quinnipiac U.], ATLANTIC ECONOMIC JOURNAL, March 2017, p. 73, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. The purpose of the present study is to determine if permit-to-purchase laws are significantly related to firearm murder rates. There has been very little research done on the effect of this particular gun control measure on crime. The present study differs from prior research in two ways. First, a large longitudinal data set is used, and data for all 50 states for the period 1980 to 2011 are examined. Second, a fixed effects model, controlling for both state and year effects is used. Results suggest that permit-to-purchase laws have no statistically-significant effect on state-level firearm murder rates.SK/C05.05) James B. Jacobs [Professor of Law, NYU] & Zoe A. Fuhr [Center for Research in Crime and Justice, NYU], ALBANY LAW REVIEW, Summer 2016, p. 1327, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. It is hard to believe that a firearms disqualified person who wants to acquire a firearm will have difficulty obtaining one. New York statistics on firearm crimes and suicides before and after passage of the SAFE Act support this conclusion.James B. Jacobs [Professor of Law, NYU] & Zoe A. Fuhr [Center for Research in Crime and Justice, NYU], ALBANY LAW REVIEW, Summer 2016, p. 1327, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Table 3 shows that the proportion of firearm-related violent crimes has not decreased. In fact, the proportion of robberies and firearm-related aggravated assaults has increased since passage of the SAFE Act, suggesting that universal background checking has not prevented criminals from obtaining firearms. Brian Doherty, REASON, February 2016, p. 32, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. From 2005 to 2012, Connecticut's gun murders per 100,000 people increased 66 percent, from 2.05 to 3.41, while Rhode Island's went down 20 percent, from 1.83 to 1.45. It seems quite premature to take Webster and his team's counterfactual guess about expected murder rates over one 10-year period as establishing any reliable causal knowledge about the effects of tougher gun purchasing laws. Yet that study was used to help buttress a proposed federal law the week it went public, trying to pressure other states into following Connecticut's lead on background checks and permits, given what we now "know" about how life-saving that move had been.Brian Doherty, REASON, February 2016, p. 32, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. After Webster's Connecticut study appeared, I asked him: Since you are presuming a strong causal effect from the law's existence, how did you account for how stringently or effectively the law is enforced? If people continued to blithely sell weapons without background checks or permits, that would blunt the notion the law would have such a strong effect on gun murder rates. Webster's emailed reply: "Virtually no studies of gun control law take enforcement into account because data are lacking and we don't really know the degree to which deterrence (people not wanting to violate the law) is a function of levels of enforcement." Unknowables shadow the causal chain in nearly all social science involving any law's effects on behavior.Brian Doherty, REASON, February 2016, p. 32, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. This study [Webster et al.] tried to prove that Missouri's 2007 repeal of its "permit to purchase" law led to a 16 percent increase in murder rates there. Lots of other factors were controlled for, and the numbers indeed showed higher murder rates compared to the U.S. average at the time after the permit law was repealed. It's tricky to credit the permit-to-purchase repeal with causing that rise, because in the four years prior to eliminating the law, Missouri's murder rates had already gone up 15 percent while the national one had stayed essentially the same. This suggests that unaccounted factors influenced Missouri's rising murder rate both before and after the law changed.Brian Doherty, REASON, February 2016, p. 32, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Public health researcher Garen Wintemute, who advocates stronger gun laws, assessed the spate of gun-law studies during an October interview with Slate and found it wanting: "There have been studies that have essentially toted up the number of laws various states have on the books and examined the association between the number of laws and rates of firearm death," said Wintemute, who is a medical doctor and researcher at the University of California, Davis. "That's really bad science, and it shouldn't inform policymaking."Brian Doherty, REASON, February 2016, p. 32, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Gun owners are more than three times as likely to commit suicide as non-gun owners, according to a 2014 Annals of Internal Medicine meta-analysis by Andrew Anglemyer and his colleagues. They looked at 14 previous observational studies regarding suicide from 1988 to 2005, statistically re-analyzing them all together. They found that the studies (with one exception) indicated that the people who committed suicide (whether with a gun or not) were more likely, usually far more likely, to own guns than the control group of people with similar characteristics who did not kill themselves. This does not, however, allow us to conclude that the gun's presence caused the suicide, since it's always possible that those more likely to be suicidal are more likely to want to own guns.Brian Doherty, REASON, February 2016, p. 32, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. A 2002 study by Mark Duggan, now an economist at Stanford University, seems to endorse that conclusion, writing that "much of the positive relationship between firearms ownership and suicide is driven by selection--individuals with above average suicidal tendencies are more likely to own a gun and to live in areas with relatively many gun owners."Brian Doherty, REASON, February 2016, p. 32, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. The U.S. currently ranks 47th in total suicide rates among nations according to World Health Organization (WHO) calculations, and nth among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development nations. But our firearm suicide rates are among the highest in the world, likely behind only Uruguay. Nations with far tougher gun laws and far lower known prevalences of gun ownership, such as Japan, India, and Korea, have far higher overall suicide rates. This suggests that the percentage of firearms in America leads us to have more firearm suicides, but not necessarily more suicides overall.Jeffrey W. Swanson [Dept. of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Duke U.] et al., LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS, Spring 2017, p. 179, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Over half of suicides in the United States are completed with guns, and many of those guns are legally obtained. Most people who die by suicide suffer from a mental disorder such as depressive illness, but only a small proportion of them have a record of involuntary civil commitment or other gun-disqualifying mental health or criminal adjudication.Jeffrey W. Swanson [Dept. of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Duke U.] et al., LAW AND CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS, Spring 2017, p. 179, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Using the law to prohibit a suicidal person from purchasing a gun is a good idea, but one that will not work--even with a comprehensive background check system--as long as those who are inclined to harm themselves do not fall into some category of persons prohibited from possessing or purchasing firearms under federal or state law. New research evidence suggests that people who die from self-inflicted gunshot wounds, even those suffering from a serious mental illness, typically have no gun-disqualifying record of any criminal or mental health adjudication. Indeed, the large majority of them would have been able to legally buy a gun on the day they used one to end their own life.James B. Jacobs [Professor of Law, NYU] & Zoe A. Fuhr [Center for Research in Crime and Justice, NYU], ALBANY LAW REVIEW, Summer 2016, p. 1327, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Table 2 shows that both total suicides and firearm-related suicides decreased slightly after passage of the SAFE Act. There is no logical reason why the SAFE Act would have had a depressing effect on non-firearm suicides. Moreover, both firearm and non-firearm suicides increased in 2014, contradicting the hypothesis that the SAFE Act reduced suicides by keeping guns out of the hands of suicide-disposed individuals.Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 4, 2017, p. A24, LexisNexis Academic. Such background checks might not have prevented the massacre in Las Vegas on Sunday night; the gunman, Stephen Paddock, is not known to have a significant criminal record and appears to have bought at least some of his guns from dealers required to vet buyers. Chris Knox [Communications Director, The Firearms Coalition], USA TODAY, June 21, 2016, p. 7A, LexisNexis Academic. The Orlando killer (we make a point not to repeat names of mass shooting perpetrators) was a licensed armed security guard and passed the required checks to buy his guns. Some killers, such as the Tucson killer who shot Gabby Giffords, bought guns legally and behaved erratically enough to concern friends. But the mental health system lacked a way to flag them. Still others simply steal their guns, as did the Newtown killer.Jacob Sullum, REASON, March 2016, p. 14, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. The perpetrators of the San Bernardino attack did not have criminal or psychiatric records that would have legally disqualified them from buying guns. In fact, one of them passed background checks when he bought pistols from California gun dealers. Obama's recommendation of "universal background checks" in response to the San Bernardino massacre is therefore a non sequitur.National Rifle Association, STATES NEWS SERVICE, July 21, 2017, pNA, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Fort Hood on Nov. 5, 2009 -- That attacker shot and killed 13 innocents with a handgun he acquired after passing a background check. Moreover, he carried out his attack in a gun-free zone. The Aurora movie theater on July 20, 2012 -- The attacker acquired his gun after passing a background check, registered his gun with the state (as required) and only used 10-round magazines in his attack. Sandy Hook Elementary on Dec. 14, 2012 -- At Sandy Hook the attacker killed 26 innocents with a rifle he had stolen from someone who acquired it via a background check. Moreover, the school in which he opened fire was a gun-free zone.National Rifle Association, STATES NEWS SERVICE, July 21, 2017, pNA, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. San Bernardino, Calif., on Dec. 2, 2015 -- This time, the attackers opened fire in a county building. They carried rifles and handguns, and had acquired the handguns after passing background checks. The county building in which they opened fire was a gun-free zone. Orlando Pulse on June 12, 2016 -- The Orlando Pulse attacker carried a rifle and handgun on his person. He acquired both firearms after passing a background check, and passed a three-day waiting period for the handgun. Moreover, the nightclub was a gun-free zone.National Rifle Association, STATES NEWS SERVICE, July 21, 2017, pNA, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Giffords is actually a perfect example of the Left's refusal to face the fact that gun control does not (and cannot) stop determined attackers. After all, the attacker who shot and wounded her on Jan. 8, 2011, did so with a gun he acquired after passing a background check.Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY, January 20, 2016, p. 1A, LexisNexis Academic. No one recent case underscores the sobering nature of the work, officials said, more than a transaction in April in South Carolina, reviewed by a veteran examiner at the West Virginia facility. In that case, which could not be resolved within the three-day period, Dylann Roof was mistakenly allowed to walk away with the .45-caliber handgun allegedly used two months later to kill nine people at the Emanuel AME Church in downtown Charleston.Brian Doherty, REASON, February 2016, p. 32, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. The survey work most famous for establishing a large number of DGUs [defensive gun uses]--as many as 2.5 million a year--was conducted in 1993 by the Florida State University criminologists Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. Kleck says they found 222 bonafide DGUs directly via a randomized anonymous nationwide telephone survey of around 5,000 people. The defender had to "state a specific crime they thought was being committed" and to have actually made use of the weapon, even if just threateningly or by "verbally referring to the gun." Kleck insists the surveyors were scrupulous about eliminating any responses that seemed sketchy or questionable or didn't hold up under scrutiny.David T. Hardy, HOWARD LAW JOURNAL, Spring 2015, LexisNexis Academic, p. 711. In consultation with other criminologists, they [Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz] created a survey that would avoid these limitations, and surveyed nearly 5,000 persons. The results were consistent with 2.5 million DGUs [defensive gun uses] per year, with three-quarters involve display but not firing of the gun. Those reporting a DGU [defensive gun uses] were disproportionately likely to have been the past victim of an assault, to live in large cities, and to be African-American or Hispanic.David T. Hardy, HOWARD LAW JOURNAL, Spring 2015, LexisNexis Academic, p. 712. A short piece by Marvin Wolfgang, often considered as the "Dean of American Criminology," followed Kleck and Gertz's article and was aptly entitled "A Tribute to a View I Have Opposed." Wolfgang began "I am as strong a gun-control advocate as can be found among the criminologists of this country ... . I hate guns - ugly, nasty instruments designed to kill people." He continued: “What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator.”David T. Hardy, HOWARD LAW JOURNAL, Spring 2015, LexisNexis Academic, p. 712. [Marvin Wolfgang, “Dean of American Criminology”]: “Maybe Franklin Zimring and Philip Cook can help me find fault with the Kleck and Gertz research, but for now, I have to admit my admiration for the care and caution expressed in this article and this research... . The Kleck and Gertz study impresses me for the caution the authors exercise and the elaborate nuances they examine methodologically. I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology. They have tried earnestly to meet all objections in advance and have done exceedingly well.”David T. Hardy, HOWARD LAW JOURNAL, Spring 2015, LexisNexis Academic, pp. 712-713. The policy implications of Kleck and Gertz's work are straightforward. If defensive gun use is that significant, restricting the possession of defensive arms has a downside or an offset. Even if a restriction were to be shown successful in reducing illegal firearms violence, unless the burdens of the restriction fell only upon criminals, the benefit might be offset by resulting increases in non-firearms criminality that is freed from the deterrent of armed defenders.SK/C09.01) Adam P. Soloperto [Seton Hall Law School], SETON HALL LAW REVIEW, 2016, LexisNexis Academic, p. 251. As articulated by the United States Supreme Court in McDonald, the right to keep and bear arms is fundamental to ordered liberty under the Constitution. The McDonald Court held that the Second Amendment is enforceable against state action by way of the Fourteenth Amendment. Supreme Court precedent holds that laws abridging rights fundamental to "our scheme of ordered liberty" are to be gazed upon with the utmost level of judicial scrutiny allowed by the Constitution. Applied to the fundamental right of self-protection created by Heller and McDonald, the mandate is clear. Both state and federal laws that abridge the core right under the Second Amendment are subject to a strict scrutiny standard of review.Stephen P. Halbrook [Research Fellow, Independent Institute], GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF LAW & PUBLIC POLICY, Winter 2016, p. 47, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. Next came the Supreme Court's decision in McDonald v. City of Chicago, which characterized the right as fundamental too many times to be disregarded. It held that "the right to keep and bear arms is fundamental to our scheme of ordered liberty" and is "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition," and thus that the Second Amendment is applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.SK/C09.03) Philip Casey Grove [U. of Arizona Law School], ARIZONA LAW REVIEW, 2017, LexisNexis Academic, p. 779. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority [in District of Columbia vs. Heller], concluded that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms, albeit not an unlimited one. In so finding, Justice Scalia determined that the core tenets of this individual right to keep and bear arms included possession of a firearm for self-defense, particularly within the home. Justice Scalia then buoyed this interpretation with an in-depth examination of the treatment of the Second Amendment by post-ratification, pre-Civil War, and post-Civil War commentators, legal scholars, and courts.Robert J. Cottrol [Professor of Law, George Washington U.] & George A. Mocsary [Asst. Professor of Law, Southern Illinois U.], GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF LAW & PUBLIC POLICY, Winter 2016, LexisNexis Academic, pp. 33-34. Indeed, firearms, unlike many other items subject to bans, have traditional lawful and legitimate uses, like enabling self-defense, preventing crime, and keeping harmful wild-animal populations in check. They also have positive values associated with them, like civic duty, self-sufficiency, self-discipline, and sportsmanship.Robert J. Cottrol [Professor of Law, George Washington U.] & George A. Mocsary [Asst. Professor of Law, Southern Illinois U.], GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF LAW & PUBLIC POLICY, Winter 2016, LexisNexis Academic, p. 21. The idea of a private right to arms only recently discovered by an activist Court prodded by a political interest group is at sharp variance with the historical record. Our best evidence indicates that the men who wrote, debated, and ultimately adopted the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights and the Second Amendment, saw a necessary connection between the private ownership of arms and the citizen's ability to serve in the militia.Matthew Gamsin [U. of Southern California Law School], SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW POSTSCRIPT, 2015, LexisNexis Academic, p. 43. Regardless of its constitutionality, the SAFE Act may be bad policy. The "longstanding prohibitions" on gun ownership by individuals with mental illness are based on the belief that individuals suffering from mental illness are a major cause of gun violence, especially widely publicized mass shootings. These views are often promoted by groups opposed to strict gun-control laws, are directed at the general public, and have come to be widely accepted in light of recent, highly publicized mass shootings by individuals with mental illness. The reality, however, is that mass shootings are very rare and that neither mental illness nor mass shootings are a significant cause of gun violence. Individuals with a serious mental illness only account for approximately 4 percent of all violent crime in the United States, the majority of which is not committed with a firearm.Matthew Gamsin [U. of Southern California Law School], SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW POSTSCRIPT, 2015, LexisNexis Academic, p. 18. Critics question the constitutionality of the SAFE Act and also argue that it is bad policy. Mental health professionals and organizations that support the rights of the mentally ill assert that mental illness plays a very small role in gun violence. They believe that the reporting provisions of the SAFE Act interfere with the patient-therapist relationship, discourage those in need of therapy from seeking mental health treatment, and inappropriately focus the gun-control debate on possession by the mentally ill.Adam P. Soloperto [Seton Hall Law School], SETON HALL LAW REVIEW, 2016, LexisNexis Academic, p. 259. In 2014, the federal government proposed a new set of rules aimed at keeping individuals who had been involuntarily committed to mental institutions from owning firearms. The names of people involuntarily committed would enter the National Instant Criminal Background Check System ("NICS"). If the person was committed because he posed a danger to himself or others, a notification would alert the seller during the background check process, and the sale would be blocked as if the applicant were a felon or domestic violence perpetrator. While past legislation prohibits those committed to inpatient care, the new rule would call on states to report to NICS the names of those committed involuntarily to outpatient psychiatric care as well. This set of laws would likely not pass the strict scrutiny test. Laws singling out the mentally ill are flawed in that they include many individuals who pose no risk of committing violent crimes.David B. Kopel [Adjunct Professor of Law, Denver U.], HARVARD JOURNAL ON LEGISLATION, Winter 2016, LexisNexis Academic, p. 303. Today "universal background checks" are based on a system created by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his "Everytown" lobby. Such laws have been enacted in several states and proposed as federal legislation. Besides covering the private sale of firearms, they also cover most loans of firearms and the return of loaned firearms. By requiring that almost all loans and returns be processed by a gun store, these laws dangerously constrict responsible firearms activities, such as safety training and safe storage.David B. Kopel [Adjunct Professor of Law, Denver U.], HARVARD JOURNAL ON LEGISLATION, Winter 2016, LexisNexis Academic, p. 305. The Bloomberg laws are highly destructive of Second Amendment rights. Their effect is to criminalize many ordinary and responsible activities, such as firearms safety training, museum displays of historic arms, and safe storage.Patrik Jonsson, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, January 5, 2016, pNA, LexisNexis Academic. To some gun owners, expanding background checks is a slip toward tyranny. That's a big reason why gun sales have exploded in the United States. As gun rights advocates see it, there's plenty of evidence that Americans want the system left as Congress designed it, not as Obama envisions it. "Both Republican- and Democrat-controlled Congresses have failed to amend [the gun show] safe harbor because the majority of Americans believe in the Second Amendment," J. Christian Adams writes on the conservative PJ Media website.SK/C10.01) Robert J. Cottrol [Professor of Law, George Washington U.] & George A. Mocsary [Asst. Professor of Law, Southern Illinois U.], GEORGETOWN JOURNAL OF LAW & PUBLIC POLICY, Winter 2016, LexisNexis Academic, p. 18. The current holdings of the Supreme Court say that the amendment states in its operative language that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," actually was meant to protect from government infringement the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Both had narrow support with five supporting justices and four dissenters. Both decisions have been called mistakes and have been subject to calls for reversal from, among others, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and former Justice John Paul Stevens. But the decisions still stand, and, it should be added, they have a great deal of popularity with the American people, protesting jurists and academics notwithstanding.SK/C10.02) National Rifle Association, STATES NEWS SERVICE, July 28, 2017, pNA, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) explored this possibility in its own poll, which asked a more nuanced question. This first explained that most gun show sales involve licensed dealers who are already required to conduct background checks under federal law, and then asked whether the person agreed or disagreed that additional laws, including enhanced background checks, were necessary for gun show sales. When the issue was presented in context, the support for increased background checks was less than half of what is claimed by various gun control groups, and nowhere near an overwhelming majority of those polled. The majority (53 percent) of those taking part in the NSSF survey agreed that more restrictions were not necessary.National Rifle Association, STATES NEWS SERVICE, July 28, 2017, pNA, Gale Cengage Learning, Expanded Academic ASAP. These results are further bolstered by results at the ballot box, where restrictive background check laws have seen nowhere near the 90 percent support claimed by gun control supporters. Despite spending many millions of dollars on background check campaigns in Maine and Nevada last year, Bloomberg's Everytown not only failed to approach their claimed 90 percent support, their measure was defeated in Maine and succeeded on the narrowest of margins in Nevada only to later be found unenforceable by the FBI and Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt.Matthew Gamsin [U. of Southern California Law School], SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LAW REVIEW POSTSCRIPT, 2015, LexisNexis Academic, p. 16. Recently, several Colorado lawmakers who pushed for expanded background checks and limits on ammunition magazines following a mass shooting in Denver were ousted by voters "in the state's first ever legislative recall," which was seen as "a warning to [others] . . . who might contemplate gun restrictions in the future."\Patrick J. Charles, WILLIAM & MARY BILL OF RIGHTS JOURNAL, May 2015, LexisNexis Academic, p. 1152. A useful illustration is the 2013 recall elections of Colorado Senators John Morse and Angela Giron, both of whom voted for tougher firearm restrictions in the wake of the Aurora, Colorado and Newtown, Connecticut shootings. Despite the public opinion polls showing statewide opposition to the recall efforts, overwhelming support for firearm background checks, and the majority support for bans on high capacity magazines, gun advocacy organizations were successful in rousing their political base to recall Morse and Giron. ................
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