“The share of background checks the FBI never completes has ticked up slowly since 2014, the first year on record, when it processed 8,256,688 checks and didn’t complete 172,879, or just under 2.1 percent.
But by 2019, the bureau was failing to complete about 2.5 percent of the background checks it processed, and it didn’t finish almost 3.4 percent in the first nine months of 2020.
Those numbers only include gun background checks run by the FBI, so they don’t count the 20 states that process some or all background checks themselves. It’s also important to remember that the number of background checks isn’t the same as the number of guns sold — many are also run when people apply for gun permits, for example, or when states check on the status of gun permit holders. A single background check can also represent multiple gun sales.”
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“The FBI responds to most gun background checks with an immediate “yes” or “no.” But sometimes, it has to delay the check to do more research because its records are incomplete. After three business days, the dealer can sell the gun anyway. Many, including large chains like Walmart, choose not to. But ones that do don’t have to tell the FBI about it.
In an average year, almost 275,000 background checks take longer than three business days. In 2020, there were 535,786 such checks, according to FBI data. That number doesn’t include background checks for things like concealed-carry permits or explosives licenses, which aren’t subject to the three-business-day rule.”
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“after 90 days, the bureau’s regulations require it to stop work and delete the background check from its computers. To make sure it doesn’t violate that policy, the bureau actually deletes unfinished background checks on day 88 just to be safe.
In the first nine months of 2020, the FBI deleted 316,912 unfinished background checks — 3.4 percent of all the checks it processed. In an average year, it deletes about 202,000. Again, this only includes background checks that are subject to the three-business-day rule.
If the FBI discovers that the potential buyer can’t own a gun in between day three and day 88, it contacts the dealer to see if the sale went through anyway. If it did, the FBI asks the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (the ATF) to retrieve the weapon.
Between 2014 and 2019, there were on average at least 3,800 of these so-called “delayed denial” sales annually, according to ATF data obtained by the gun-control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety. But there were at least 5,807 in all of 2020, according to the ATF data — the most since 2006, the first complete year on record.”
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“Asked why it didn’t finish so many background checks in 2020, the FBI said in a statement that it “depends on the availability of relevant information and records provided by federal, state, local, and tribal agencies.” The bureau also said that it has “reallocated resources to help ensure that it can continue processing background checks efficiently.”
Gun sales have surged since April 2020, thanks, at least in part, to the pandemic, protests last summer for racial justice and the election of President Biden in November. The FBI data shows how the background check system has struggled to keep up. And, at this point, it’s unclear when the problem is going to get better.”
“a legal doctrine known as anti-commandeering, which has been upheld in five Supreme Court cases from 1842 to 2018. It holds that the federal government can’t require states and localities to participate in the enforcement of federal laws.”
“What good is an AR-15 against an oppressive government armed with tanks and bombers? That’s the question gun owners often get asked, as if the destructive power of the modern state is a mic-drop argument against private weapons ownership. That might be a bit more convincing if resistance fighters didn’t repeatedly go up against well-armed troops with whatever weapons they can make or scavenge in hopes of gaining breathing room and forcing change. Sometimes, they even win, and their chances would undoubtedly be better if they had better tools at hand to begin with.”
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“Despite endorsement for resistance efforts from the pro-democracy shadow government facing off against the ruling junta, Reuters emphasized that a loosely organized group “[a]rmed with a few hunting guns made by village blacksmiths, catapults, some airguns and Molotov cocktails … were no match for forces hardened by decades of conflict and equipped with combat weapons.”
But, despite the paucity of their arms and training, the fighters gave government forces a day-long battle. They had to turn, at least for the time being, to makeshift weapons because the regime spent years trying to keep the population disarmed so that it wouldn’t have to face serious resistance.
“In Myanmar, civilians are not allowed to possess any firearms,” notes the University of Sydney’s GunPolicy.org.”
“Folajtar has been fighting that particular act of Congress in federal court since 2018. Last week, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit rejected her constitutional challenge.
“Persons who have committed serious crimes forfeit the right to possess firearms much the way they ‘forfeit other civil liberties,'” such as the right the vote, stated the majority opinion of Judge Thomas L. Ambro in Folajtar v. Barr. And in this case, because Congress has designated Folajtar’s crime to be a felony, “we defer to the legislature’s determination.” That deferential approach, Ambro argued, “safeguards the separation of powers by allowing democratically constituted legislatures, not unelected judges, to decide in most cases what types of conduct reflect so serious a breach of the social compact as to justify the loss of Second Amendment rights.”
Writing in dissent, Judge Stephanos Bibas faulted his colleagues for an “extreme deference that gives legislatures unreviewable power to manipulate the Second Amendment by choosing a label.” Yes, there are “historical limits on the Second Amendment,” he acknowledged. And yes, “those limits protect us from felons, but only if they are dangerous.” Lisa Folajtar “is not dangerous. Neither the majority nor the Government suggest otherwise. Because she poses no danger to anyone,” Bibas concluded, she has no business permanently losing one of her constitutional rights.
In 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit delivered a similar ruling in Kanter v. Barr. Writing in dissent, then-Judge Amy Coney Barrett—who is Justice Amy Coney Barrett now—insisted that the majority was dead wrong.
“History is consistent with common sense: it demonstrates that legislatures have the power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns,” Barrett wrote. “But that power extends only to people who are dangerous. Founding-era legislatures did not strip felons of the right to bear arms simply because of their status as felons. Nor have the parties introduced any evidence that founding-era legislatures imposed virtue-based restrictions on the right; such restrictions applied to civic rights like voting and jury service, not to individual rights like the right to possess a gun. In 1791—and for well more than a century afterward—legislatures disqualified categories of people from the right to bear arms only when they judged that doing so was necessary to protect the public safety.””
Homicide Harvard Injury Control Research Center. Havard T.H.Chan School of Public Health. FIREARMS AND FAMILY VIOLENCE Arthur Kellermann, Sheryl Heron. 1999. Emergency Medicine Clinics of North America. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0733862705700924 Firearm possession and violent death: A critical review Wolfgang Stroebe. 2013. Aggression and Violent
“America’s weak gun laws make it much easier to commit shootings like these. This is a widely known fact, including among terrorist groups. Back in 2011, a now-dead American al-Qaeda operative, Adam Gadahn, said as much in a video to supporters”
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“Every country is home to extremists and other hateful individuals. People of every country get into arguments and fights with friends, family, and peers. But in the US, it’s much more likely that someone who’s extreme, hateful, or otherwise angry is able to pull out a gun and kill someone — there are so many guns around and few barriers to obtaining the weapons.”
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“The research, compiled by the Harvard School of Public Health’s Injury Control Research Center, is also pretty clear: After controlling for variables such as socioeconomic factors and other crime, places with more guns have more gun deaths. Researchers have found this to be true not only with homicides but also with suicides”
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“the US is not an outlier when it comes to overall crime”
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“Instead, the US appears to have more lethal violence specifically, driven in large part by the prevalence of guns.”
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“Researchers have found that stricter gun laws could help. A 2016 review of 130 studies in 10 countries, published in Epidemiologic Reviews, found that new legal restrictions on owning and purchasing guns tend to be followed by a drop in gun violence, a strong indicator that restricting access to guns can save lives. A review of the US evidence by RAND also linked some gun control measures, including background checks, to lower rates of injuries and deaths. A growing body of evidence from Johns Hopkins researchers further supports the efficacy of laws that require a license to buy and own guns.
That doesn’t mean bigots and extremists will never be able to carry out shootings in places with stricter gun laws. Even the strictest gun laws can’t prevent every shooting.
Guns are not the only contributor to violence, either. Other factors include, for example, poverty, urbanization, alcohol consumption, and the strength of criminal justice systems.”