The chart above is from a study done in 2015 called "Gun Ownership And Social Gun Culture". It shows the percentage of each states population that are gun owners. As you can see, there is a wide variety of ownership among the individual states. Some states have a large percentage of gun owners and others have a very low percentage.
It is not my purpose to judge any state on its ownership percentage, and I am not calling for the banning of all guns anywhere. As long as we have the Second Amendment, Americans will have the right to own a gun.
I would like to feel that all of those gun owners were decent and law-abiding citizens. Unfortunately, with the laxity of gun laws in many of our states, we cannot know that. It is just too easy for dangerous people to buy any kind of gun they want because our background check law has enormous loopholes in it -- loopholes that allow about 40% of gun buyers each year to avoid a background check.
It simply makes sense that every person wanting to buy a gun should be required to undergo a background check. And I'm not alone in that view. About 85% to 90% of all Americans agree.
Some will tell you that if a person can't buy a gun legally, they will just go to the black market to buy it. Let me make a couple of points about that. First, it's not as easy to go to that black market as some seem to think. You have to know someone in it and they have to trust you (since law enforcement does a pretty good job of finding and arresting those selling guns illegally). Second, most of the guns flowing into the black market were bought legally (from a lax gun law state and without a background check). Plugging the holes in our background check law would seriously restrict the flow of guns into the black market.
An effective background check law (including guns sold at gun shows, over the internet, and among private individuals) would go a long way toward keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people (through both legal and black market means) -- and it would NOT violate the right of any law-abiding citizen to own a gun.
That is the very least we could do to reduce the number of gun deaths in this country each year.
No comments:
Post a Comment
ANONYMOUS COMMENTS WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED. And neither will racist,homophobic, or misogynistic comments. I do not mind if you disagree, but make your case in a decent manner.