Myth #10: We don't need more gun laws—we just need to enforce the ones we have.
Fact-check: Weak laws and loopholes backed by the gun lobby make it easier to get guns illegally.
• Around 40% of all legal gun sales involve private sellers and don't require background checks. 40% of prison inmates who used guns in their crimes got them this way.
• An investigation found 62% of online gun sellers were willing to sell to buyers who said they couldn't pass a background check.
• 20% of licensed California gun dealers agreed to sell handguns to researchers posing as illegal "straw" buyers.
• The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has not had a permanent director for 6 years, due to an NRA-backed requirement that the Senate approve nominees.
This last myth is the most damning of all. It illustrates, beyond a shadow of a doubt, how completely full of shit they are when they say they want to "enforce existing laws." To put it simply, they don't and they're lying.
In looking back at all these myths, one has to wonder where they get the ass to behave in this fashion. With the number of households owning guns shrinking by the year, you would think they would be a little more humble and a lot more helpful. Doing the usual stomp down the hallway followed by the door slam and 'Fuck you, dad, I can do whatever I want" adolescent tantrum stands in direct opposition to solutions.
3 comments:
So apparently M, the Senate is proposing to make it more illegal to do a straw purchase. How exactly does that help?
There isn’t really a math issue here (although both of the studies contacted just over a hundred gun dealers). But I would editorialize that the “gun lobby” is more than just the NRA. In fact, Congress is likely to pass laws that will address points one to three and such ideas have broad support among gun owners. But I would add that points two, three and four basically agree with the supposed Myth. Straw sales bypass existing law. Online gun sellers, if they sell to people who fail background checks, are breaking the law (although very few criminals get their guns online). The lack of an ATF director is a failure to enforce the law. How, exactly, does this disprove the myth?
Between this and the “study” on mass shootings, Mother Jones has made their bias clear. They are not really interested in the facts. They are not interested in the data. They are interested in an agenda. They are interested in portraying gun ownership as a destructive evil force in society. And no matter how far they have to dig and how much they have to twist the data, they will find the “facts” to support this position.
That’s not unusual. People do that. But at Mathematical Malpractice Watch, I see no reason to let people get away with it. I see no reason to pretend someone is a serious contributor to a debate — and MJ is considered a serious contributor to the debate — when they frankly aren’t.
Well, well, look what fact check turned up. You love you them fact checks, don't you M?
The claims that gun sales made without background checks comprise "more than," ''as many as," ''nearly" or "about" 40 percent of all gun sales are rooted in a poll looking broadly at gun ownership in America. Sponsored by the Justice Department through a grant to the Police Foundation, the poll's principal relevance today is as a snapshot of the way things were when it was taken, namely 1994.
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