Background Checks a Failed Paradigm: Prohibited Possession Works

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The failed paradigm that has been followed for 44 years in the United States has been to attempt, unsuccessfully, to prevent crime by not allowing prohibited groups from buying firearms. Obviously, this approach has not worked. It is a failed paradigm because its focus is on the 99 percent of people who do not need to be controlled, instead of the 1 percent who do. The 1 percent can always find a way to obtain firearms illegally. The Supreme court has ruled that in the United States, you have a right to a loaded, unlocked handgun that is in common usage. This means that those who want illegal guns will always have a supply of them from the legal stock.

If that is not enough, the technology of guns is well developed and easily replicated in home workshops. The emerging 3-D printer technology has already produced legal semi-auto weapons and 30 round magazines. No background check can stop prohibited people from obtaining firearms with this technology. Those who do not trust politicians' promises claim that stopping criminals and madmen from obtaining firearms was never the intent of these laws. Instead they serve as a means of moving toward a national database of legal firearms preparatory to piecemeal confiscation over generations, as happened in England.

What has worked to decrease the number of murders, what has a proven track record, is focusing on prohibiting the possession of guns by dangerous individuals, instead of their acquisition of guns.

Focusing on the acquisition of guns creates the necessity of a huge, expensive and ineffective bureaucratic system aimed at the 99 percent of the population that does not commit violent crimes. It assumes that everyone is a criminal who has to prove that they are not a criminal in order to acquire a gun. What works is to focus on the small number of people who have shown that they cannot be trusted with a gun, and to make sure that they do not have a gun.

This system actually works. It worked in Operation Ceasefire in Boston in 1996. It has worked in Minneapolis, Salinas (California) and in Indianapolis. It is backed by pony tailed liberals and the NRA.

As detailed in David M. Kennedy’s work, and long known by police officers everywhere, the vast majority of murderous violence is conducted by a very small number of individuals. Those individuals are known in their communities and by the police. The number of murders can be tremendously reduced by focusing on those individuals and making sure that they are disarmed, put in jail, or dissuaded from their criminal careers and placed into situations where they can get treatment or an alternate to their criminal associations and habits.

We have limited resources. We are currently putting enormous resources into scrutinizing the vast majority of people who do not pose a problem. It is a failed paradigm. It does not work. It creates a deep and not unfounded suspicion that the real purpose is the ultimate destruction of the gun culture and the right to keep and bear arms in America.

We should stop this approach and instead focus on the small number of people who are truly dangerous. Those people should be closely monitored and either put in jail or given treatment. The resources needed to do this would be a small fraction of what is being devoted to the failed paradigm of background checks.

Dean Weingarten

Background Check False Positive Analysis Link

Supreme court on unlocked, loaded handguns Link

Operation Ceasefire Link

Project Exile NRA-ILA Link

David M. Kennedy Link

Links work at the site:

http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2013/01/background-checks-failed-paradigm.html
 
I agree, the focus is way too much on guns, and not on violence itself. Gun control ignores all the other weapons, including the biggest weapon used in child murders - bare hands. I see legislation that makes "harsher penalties to use a gun on a first responder" and I think "why not make it illegal to use violence on a first responder and cover all bases?" I see "make it so if a therapist believes there is credible threat that his patient will use a gun to commit violence"...so is he not supposed to report potential domestic violence if a gun isn't mentioned? Is he not supposed to report a stabbing spree because the law didn't cover knives?
 
Here in Alaska we put "No Alcohol" on licenses and state IDs of persons who are prohibited alcohol as part of their probation.

Why not make it a condition of release for felons and those adjudicated mentally defective to carry a state ID or drivers license with "No Firearms" printed on it. Then citizens in face to face sales would have an instant background check, and gun stores can sort that aspect of the NICS check out instantly.

To that add "adjudicated mentally defective in possession" to the "felon in possession" statutes already on the books, and make it a separate felony crime for a prohibited person to purchase a firearm with an altered ID, old ID predating their prohibited status, or a form of ID not carrying the no firearms declaration (i.e. a pass port).
 
^^^ This. I like it. Not putting any additional restrictions on law-abiding citizens, but more effectively enforcing existing laws. This is an idea that needs more attention, in my opinion.
 
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