How Background Checks Have Failed To Deliver On Promises

By Tom Knighton

When you go to purchase a firearm from an FFL, you have to go through a background check. It doesn’t matter if this happens at a gun show, a gun store, or some guy with an FFL who deals firearms out of his kitchen. The rules are the same, and you have to go through the check regardless. The only exception are states that allow a concealed carry permit to serve as a background check, which makes sense considering the first thing you lose when you’re convicted of a disqualifying offense is your permit.

But does it actually do anything? I mean, we keep seeing bad guys get guns easily enough despite the Brady checks. If that’s the case, then are they actually doing anything?

Gun Owners of American executive director Erich Pratt took to the pages of USA Today last week to express his thoughts on the topic, and he makes some good points.

“ATF agents did not consider most of the prohibited persons who had obtained guns to be dangerous.”

Those words, quoted last year by USA TODAY, explain why the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and local governments are not prosecuting most gun buyers who …Read the Rest

Source:: Bearing Arms