Last week we saw how to reduce Chicago’s gun violence problem, where people are gunned down on a regular basis despite Illinois having among the toughest gun laws in these United States. The FBI acted in a true law enforcement capacity and arrested three young men that had legally purchased over 90 guns in Kentucky and Tennessee and then illegally transferred them to gun criminals in Chicago. The buyers acted as “straw buyers”, so a “universal” background check (such as the one being pushed by president Biden and other progressives) would have zero effect on these gun criminals. Why? The legal way to transfer a gun to a resident of another state involves doing so through a licensed dealer, and a background check on the buyer. As I and many others have observed before, the only people affected by a universal background check are the law-abiding- it creates yet another database via the ATF form utilized. Gun criminals will continue on as they have always done.
This happened because the Chicago Police Department investigated the weapons used in these crimes and by tracing them learned about the “straw” buyers. Existing gun laws were used, and the source of the guns was cut off. Similarly, in nearby Tallahassee, most gun homicides I researched over a two-year period involved someone with a gun that was not legally able to have it. How did they get it? No one in the local media cared to ask, even though doing so would involve only one law enforcement agency and take less than a week. On the rare occasion when someone in the media makes the effort to do so, they prove these guns were obtained by methods- such as theft- that would not be prevented by any new law being pushed by progressives. When existing gun laws are enforced, that can reduce gun crime. Defunding the police will only hurt this effort and cost more lives.
Paul Henry