Our politicians often exhibit too much creativity, inventing new problems to be solved by highly paid staff administering big budgets instead of figuring out how to get government to do the ordinary boring things with a reasonable degree of competence. But sometimes they do not exhibit enough imagination, as with Democratic demands for gun-control measures, renewed in the aftermath of two horrible massacres only a few days apart.
The firearms used in these crimes were, as far as the evidence indicates, legally acquired from federally licensed and regulated firearms dealers. That means that the killers passed background checks. The demand that other people pass background checks in other circumstances (for example, if you give someone a firearm as a gift) is completely irrelevant to these crimes. It is not even entirely clear that the federal government has the constitutional authority to regulate private transfers that take place within a single state and therefore do not constitute interstate commerce. But even if it did, such measures would not prevent crimes such as the ones in Atlanta and Denver, nor would they do much to prevent other kinds of crimes, because criminals most often come by their weapons by means of straw purchasers (people with clean criminal records who buy guns on behalf of felons who cannot pass a background check), by buying stolen guns, or by stealing the guns themselves.
Comments