On October 1st, 2015, an Oregon community college student opened fire on campus, killing
9 people, and injuring many more.
Media reports have described the gunman as mentally unstable.
Yet he had passed federal background checks necessary to purchase firearms, and possessed
14 guns.
So do background checks really work?
Well, before 1994, federal law didn’t require gun dealers to run background checks, and
many people just lied about their eligibility to own a firearm.
But after an assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, Congress passed legislation requiring
federal background checks.
These checks are completed using an FBI database.
Factors that can disqualify a gun buyer include: being a convicted criminal or a fugitive,
using illegal drugs, mental illness, illegal immigrant, being dishonorably discharged from
the army, and renouncing US citizenship.
Since 1998, the FBI has processed more than 200 million applications and denied only about
a million of them.
But with so many high-profile mass shootings in the past few decades, many are saying that
current background checks aren’t doing enough.
One major problem is that private parties are still able to sell firearms without doing
any background checks on a buyer.
This is known as the “gun show loophole”.
To combat this of type potentially dangerous sale, politicians like Hillary Clinton and
Joe Biden have expressed support for “Universal Background Checks”.
This would force all gun sales, public and private, to include a mandatory background
check.
Another drawback to the current system is that background checks don’t check too deeply
into mental competence.
Before the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, a state judge had previously deemed the shooter
as mentally ill, yet he still passed two background checks and was about to purchase guns legally.
Pertinent information, like medical histories or records of erratic behavior, can be inaccessible
to federal authorities.
So do gun background checks work?
Well, not really.
While they may keep guns out of the hands of some criminal or mentally unstable individuals,
they are still widely accessible through the black market and theft, or simply available
to purchase from a relative or friend.
Although federal checks do serve a purpose, they are not nearly comprehensive enough to
filter out every dangerous gunbuyer.
President Obama has said that 40% of gun sales are done privately, without background checks.
Unfortunately, stricter background checks are thought to be violations of privacy, as
well as the second Amendment.
Whether Americans are willing to forgo their love of guns and privacy in exchange for fewer
gun deaths is yet to be seen.
The U.S. has a high rate of gun violence, but why is that?
Find out more in our video.
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