Hey Man, Wanna Gun… Legally fer Sure?

The Worldwide Web links us together, instant access for almost any reason. From a class of college grads staying in touch for life to al Qaeda plotting terror… to ordering that latest cooking appliance at a distance to ordering a fine semiautomatic weapon virtually anonymously.  It is also one of the biggest loopholes in the legitimate American gun trade.

“A new study by Third Way , a centrist think tank with close ties to the Obama administration, found that thousands of guns, including so-called assault weapons, are for sale online and that many prospective buyers were shopping online specifically to avoid background checks.

“The study focused on Armslist.com — a popular classified site similar to Craigslist.org that facilitates private sales of firearms and ammunition based on location — and analyzed listings in 10 states where senators voted against a background checks compromise this spring.

“At any given time, more than 15,000 guns were for sale in those states, according to the study, and more than 5,000 of them were semi-automatic weapons. Nearly 2,000 ads were from prospective buyers asking to buy specifically from private sellers, where no background checks are required.” Washington Post, August 5^th. With over 40% of guns sales taking place outside of the market of registered gun sellers, this is no small “loophole.” Registered dealers don’t have that exemption.

Past blogs have focused on those gun shows, where registered gun sellers and private “collectors” and sellers gather with no governmental oversight or background checks in states like Texas, where such unverified sales are perfectly legal. Led forcefully by the deep coffers and powerful advertising and publicity machine of the National Rifle Association, the battle against imposing such background checks – despite NRA “noise” that felons and the mentally ill shouldn’t have access to such guns – seems to make getting guns that much easier for those gang-bangers, felons and the mentally ill.

“The National Rifle Association and other gun rights supporters have advocated against expanding the background check system because they believe doing so will not stop society’s most dangerous people from procuring weapons and eventually will lead to even stricter gun regulations, including a federal registry.” The Post.

Are you tired of mass shootings, gun-slayings of “a couple of people,” and the perception – quite justified – in the eyes of the world of the American “gun obsessed” ethos that puts more private guns (per capita) in our society than any other country in the world? Are you weary of disproven slogans that taking guns out of the system only empowers criminals? Those who ignore the 1996 Australian gun ban (after a horrible mass shooting in Tasmania) and the fact that researchers, Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University, found that in the decade after the gun laws, firearm homicides there dropped 59 percent?

Without a mass consensus of Americans demanding action… more will die needlessly… and nothing will change. Right now, the NRA’s policy appears to be the law of the land. I cannot think of an organization I trust less with the lives and prosperity of those Americans who are destined to be mowed down by lethal gunfire from those who have no business carrying such weapons.

I’m Peter Dekom, and while I feel sometimes that those who have supported the NRA guns everywhere policies and die in hostile gunfire might deserve that fate, it’s hard to justify when so many innocents perish as well.