AP: Surging Black Friday Sales Put Guns In Hands Of Wrong People

Two days before Black Friday–a day that has come to be identified with record-breaking gun sales–the Associated Press is claiming that surging sales on November 28 will put guns in the hands of the wrong people.

Even though the people who buy guns at retail stores go through a background check before doing so, the AP suggests the background check system we’ve had in place since the 1990s is too porous, allowing too many prohibited persons to buy a gun. 

According to the AP, “512 gun sales a day” take place to people who shouldn’t be able to buy a gun yet are able to do so by slipping through the cracks of our current background check system. The AP does not provide specifics on why these particular 512 persons ought to be barred from owning a gun, they simply say the problem exists because of a dearth of information due to states’ tardiness in updating the criminal and mental records accessed by the FBI during a background check. 

Later in the column, they list “ten factors” that “disqualify gun purchasers,” but that was long after the opening sentence focused on “512 gun sales a day” that shouldn’t happen.

Breitbart News spoke with Crime Prevention Research Center president John Lott about the suggestion that a lack of information is allowing the wrong people to slip through our current background check system. Lott suggested the problem is completely different–that the real problem is in how our current background check system can inadvertently prevent law-abiding citizens from getting the guns they need when they need them. 

According to Lott:

Virtually the only people who are stopped from buying guns by the current background check system are law-abiding citizens who were mistakenly prevented from buying a gun. If the background check system is missing a few names, it really only means that there will be fewer false positive cases where law-abiding citizens are stopped from buying a gun because they have a name that is similar to someone that the government really wanted to stop. Mistakes that prevent some law-abiding citizens from quickly getting guns when needed for protection cause real harm to people’s safety and this needs to be acknowledged.

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins  Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.