It would be nice to think it could be cheap and easy. But when someone has a sale almost done, and the buyer says "Ah, going to the police station is such a hassle! What if I give you an extra $20 and we don't worry about it?"..... How many people lack the moral fortitude to say "No. I have to be sure you're not prohibited from possessing a firearm."?
We need laws in society, because human nature is often self serving. Many people will not do the right thing when no one is watching. From littering, on up.
Strawman Alert! At no point did I ever say that we do not, "need laws in society." You may be entirely unaware, but there are a lot of laws already. The issue that remains is where we will bring about more benefit, or harm, from yet more laws. Ane these laws restrict the rights of otherwise lawful gun owners, in particular.
Most people would see, "Ah, going to the police station is such a hassle! What if I give you an extra $20 and we don't worry about it?" as a deal-breaking red flag. Yes, criminal-to-criminal transfers will still occur. However, we are not talking about that here because no background checking scheme, be it mandatory, as you call for, or voluntary, as I call for to be legalized, would have a significant impact on criminal-to-criminal transfers.
Here is a snip from a letter I wrote a while ago about mandatory background checks:
. . .One that is often proposed is an expansion of background checks to include all private transfers. Such a policy could, if it had been in place, cost the life of one of my friends.
He was in a bad spot in life, doing through a divorce and having problems at work. He a couple of us, his close friends. His request was that we come to his house and remove his firearms until his life was back together. Of course, we did that for him.
About a year later he was back on the right path and asked for his firearms to be returned, and we returned them. This was all a simple moving of firearms among friends, however, it would have been legally considered to be a transfer.
Mandatory background checks and the associated fees would certainly not have been a problem if we had a sense of certainty that it would have saved the life of a friend. However, those policies may have made him slower to ask for help and may have interfered with his willingness to take part in a “just in case” intervention.
I cannot believe that we were the only people in this country that have taken part in such an intervention. As such, I oppose the programme of mandatory background checks for all firearm transfers. We need to make it easier, not harder, for friends to ask for help.
How many, otherwise lawful gun owners, should be sent to prison because their house was robbed?
How many people who may have otherwise have been willing to ask friends for help are we going to allow to die, just so we can feel a little better?