have 45 active years in criminal justice, 20 as a police office and 25 as an academic . I personally investigated 250 murders, hundreds of gun cases and am a qualified expert witness who owns handguns.. I hold a bachelors, two masters, and a doctorate in the field, graduated from the FBI Academy, Secret Service Academy, and the senior command course, Bramshill, Police Staff College of England and Wales.
Time for a reality check. Illegal handguns are the problem. They come from 2 primary sources.
1. Guns bought legally by people who were not legally qualified to do so, mostly in states that require little or no background check and allow the purchaser to take immediate possession of the gun; false identification, gun show and internet purchases, straw purchases.
2. Gun purchased by ‘resellers,’ who, using false identification, travel to states that allow gun purchases as in item 1. These people move from gun store to gun store buying 10-20 handguns at a time, maybe a hundred in a few days. They return to urban areas and resell them on the black market for 2 or 3 times original value. This is the single largest source of illegal handguns in New York City and most cities.
Universal background checks will nearly eliminate problems 1 and 2, and immediately impact gun violence, without infringing on 2nd amendment rights. Want to do more, add a waiting period rule (gun comes a day or two after purchase) and/or a one gun per sale rule (you can buy only one gun a week or a month) and you save lives. (limiting magazine capacity or assault weapons is useless lipservice).
If you think universal background checks threaten democracy, consider the NRA’s thwarting the political will of 90% of the American people by defeating the meaningful gun legislation they wanted. Now there is your threat to democracy.
This is a great editorial! I hope it goes viral cause people need to read this.
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