As Senators line up to help the background check “compromise” clear its first procedural hurdle, it’s important to remember this measure will have absolutely no affect on decreasing public shootings, reducing violent crime, or improving the safety of children who are sitting in gun free zones.
That’s because expanded background checks are about gun control rather than stopping the next Sandy Hook-style shooting.
Republicans, their constituents, and Democrat Senators in red states who are up for re-election in 2014 need to ask themselves these questions:
1. Would expanded background checks have stopped Adam Lanza from doing what he did on Dec. 14, 2012?
2. Would expanded background checks have at least hindered or slowed what he did?
3. Why are President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA), and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg pushing expanded background checks at this moment?
Answers: no, no, and “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.“
Background checks are already in place and have been since 1998, but Adam Lanza went around them by stealing his guns. What is accomplished by expanding background checks that criminals will continue to avoid? The only thing that is accomplished is an incremental increase of more gun control on law-abiding citizens.
This is why Obama’s January announcement of a push for expanded background checks was even greeted with doubt and skepticism by The New York Times, which was quick to point out that expanded background checks would have “done little to prevent to massacre in Newtown.”
Make no mistake, expanded background checks are about gun control, not preventing the next Sandy Hook.
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