On February 27th, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence chair Sara Brady and president Dan Gross joined MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell to discuss 20 years of background checks in America and to make the reoccurring–albeit misleading–claim that “40 percent of all gun purchases in the U.S…. occur without any background check.”
Mitchell began the segment by asking Brady how she maintains her sanity with “all these loopholes” which keep gun buyers from going through background checks. Brady said she’s become “hardened” to the process, that it takes time, and that the current Congress is “not good” for gun control.
She did not mention that our country did not have background checks until 20 years ago–that what she and Mitchell call “loopholes” were what our Founding Fathers and previous generations simply called freedom.
Mitchell then highlighted the gunshot wound Jim Brady sustained during the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan and brought up the heinous crime at Sandy Hook Elementary. She said: “[But] no matter how many victims there are of gun violence there is still such political resistance to closing those loopholes.”
It should be pointed out that neither John Hinkley, Jr. nor Adam Lanza got their guns through “loopholes.” When Hinkley bought his gun there were no background checks, thus no loopholes, and Adam Lanza did not buy his guns at all. Rather, he stole them.
Nevertheless, Gross said the encouraging thing is that the American people support more gun control whether Congress does or not.
On December 4th Breitbart News reported a CNN Poll that shows the American people don’t actually support more gun control. In fact, it shows that support for gun control fell 23 percent during the calendar year 2013, so that 50 percent of Americans actually oppose more gun control.
As for the claim that “40 percent of all gun purchases in the U.S.” occur without a background check, this is very misleading. On March 28th Breitbart News reported on the distortion behind this number after President Obama used it too.
The 40 percent of guns that are purchased without a background check are guns that are being bought secondhand–guns that a father is selling to a son, a mother to a daughter, a brother to a brother, a neighbor to a neighbor, etc.
Many of these guns were in circulation before there was a paper trail on gun purchases, so gun grabbers like Obama, Bloomberg, Mitchell, and the Brady Campaign try to paint a picture of these guns as outlying in hopes of expanding background checks and starting a paper trail for them now.
Paper trails lead to registration lists–just ask Californians.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins.
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