A murdering thug who goes by the pseudonym John Lennon writes in the news magazine Quartz “Easy access to guns helped me commit murder. I’ve changed, but the loopholes remain“.
First of all, how many reputable news magazines feature stories by convicted murderers? How many reputable news magazines make stories by convicted murderers headline news? And lastly, why would anyone look to the viewpoint of a violent criminal predator to set national policy unless you’re looking for more criminal violence?
He writes:
The reality is some people refuse even to fill out one extra form or wait one extra minute when buying a gun, even if those measures would save a life.
He spends the whole article decrying “straw purchases” where a legal gun buyer will buy a gun for someone prohibited from firearms ownership. Yet half-way through he acknowledges that “stray purchasing” is already illegal, punishable by ten years in prison:
…handing guns over to felons is itself a felony punishable by up to ten years in prison.
He writes of how fellow violent criminal predator convicts support his position:
…I spoke with a real-life revolutionary at Attica named Anthony “Jalil” Bottoms, a former Black Panther who’s been in prison for the past 44 years for shooting two New York City cops. And though Jalil has a few reservations, on the whole, he agrees that any change that could prevent a gun being trafficked is a good one because it may save black lives
He contends that ending “untraceable” private sales of guns between law-abiding Americans, which he falsely claims are “illegal” on their face, should be outlawed. In other words, your liberty to sell private property no different than gold, Bibles or baseball cards to another person should be unlawful without government permission and adding that sale to a government database.
Conventional wisdom holds that if a problem exists—like, say, a loophole that allows untraceable gun purchases–we should just close it. And yet, illegal private-party gun sales account for as much as 40% of gun purchases in the US.
He claims that these gun purchases happen at gun shows, based upon a badly-flawed junk science report issued by the University of California at Davis. The report makes all sorts of wild claims, directly contradicting other studies done by relatively unbiased U.S. government research. Who are you going to believe: “science” bought and paid for by anti-gun trust funds, or U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics hard data?
Claim: “Inside Gun Shows: What Goes on When Everybody Thinks Nobody’s Watching” by the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program: Gun shows are a leading source of guns used in criminal violence in Northern California, the United States, Mexico and Canada.
Reality: “Firearms Use by Offenders” by the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics: Source of gun: Gun show 0.7% in 1997.
Yes, it’s friends and family or purchases made “in the street” from other criminals that each account for the source of nearly 40% (39.6 and 39.2, respectively) of guns used illegally by criminals.
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