Back in the day, TTAG fought a vigorous battle to debunk the “gun show loophole.” You may recall that everyone from the President of the United States on down bandied that term about, claiming that 40 percent of all firearms sales “by-passed” Brady Law background checks. We argued – and continue to argue – that 100 percent of firearms sales should not involve local, state or federal government oversight, as per the “shall not be infringed” part of the United States Constitution. Anyway, gun rights advocates defeated the Manchin-Toomey bill which would have mandated so-called “universal background checks.” Colorado, however, went full-you-know-what and passed a state version of the reg. And now they’ve learned the truth about that bogus 40 percent figure . . .
A law expanding background check requirements on Colorado gun sales has been in effect for about a year, and an Associated Press analysis of state data compiled during that span shows the projected impact was vastly overstated in a key budget report . . .
Lawmakers drafting the background check requirement, aimed at keeping firearms away from those with a criminal history, relied on information from a non-partisan [my ass] research arm of the Legislature that predicted about 420,000 new reviews over the first two years. Accordingly, they budgeted about $3 million to the agency that conducts the checks to handle the anticipated surge of work.
But after a year of operating under the new system, Colorado Bureau of Investigations officials have performed only about 13,600 reviews considered a result of the new law — about 7 percent of the estimated first year total.
Thank you, AP, for pointing out that the 13.6k figure includes background checks for interstate sales – which were already covered by CO’s existing law. So the actual number of new checks is even lower. Even so, the 13.6k stat represets four percent of the 311,000 background checks performed during the first year of the expansion. This in a booming firearms market.
Now let’s drill down on that 40 percent number, shall we?
That figure, which Colorado legislative analysts and CBI officials say was the best available for the basis of their estimation calculus, comes from a 1997 National Institute of Justice report that gun-right’s activists criticize as inaccurate.
Catherine Mortensen, a spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association, said that using the 40 percent figure as a basis for Colorado’s projection “calls into question lawmakers’ access to accurate information on not only this, but all firearms-related legislation.”
Ya think? Can the antis point to ONE gun control law that’s based on solid factual evidence? The ban on “high capacity” magazines? The ban on “assault weapons”? By the same token, can they provide any factual evidence that ONE gun control law lowered crime or suicide rates? The Brady Law?
Speaking of which, the Brady bunch don’t care. As always, when confronted with reality, the forces of civilian disarmament cower behind their ultimate “argument”: curtailing Americans’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms is the right thing to do if it saves even one life. Theoretically.
Brian Malte, senior national policy director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said his group applauds Colorado for passing the law.
“The bottom line,” he said, “is even if one, or five, or 10, or 10,000 or 20,000 people are being blocked, that’s less dangerous people walking around with guns.”
As if the law blocks anyone dangerous from walking around with a gun. Still, result? The pro-gun folks have more facts to bring to bear in the next election – assuming facts help.
So Colorado set up an agency to handle this expected huge surge in background checks? I gotta wonder what are these folks doing in their offices, playing solitaire on their ‘puters? sleeping on their desks? doing telemarketing work on the side while on the clock?
They’re sitting around with their thumbs up their asses while getting payed with my fuckin money. Every so often, the phone rings and they put some guys name into a russian roulette “check” system. God help him if he has a common name. After they finish fucking up this guys day, they all sit around feeling good about themselves while thinking “I keep guns off the street” and “this job matters”. It’s horrendous.
You forgot making bids on eBay…Updating Facebook…Posting “Anthony Weiner” pics…ect.
Amway and real estate deals.
Bidding on gunbroker.com?
hanging out at tube galore
Probably all playing the Kim Kardashian game and crapping in the hallways at work – just like the fine folks at the EPA. !
No, Colorado did not set up special dept just for this new law. Colorado has always been since the original Brady check decided it was better to run through CBI (Co Burea of investigation) first for all checks. Which is redundant and stupid waste of CO tax payer funds. Essentially all checks go through CBI, which runs through Federal which checks back to state anyway. Years ago we had some politicians trying to remove the redundancy but it failed. The only thing they did thinking our universal background checks would explode because of the “Universal back ground check” law was add an addition $10 on all checks.
It’s Colorado, they are sitting around getting high while laughing at our constitution. Any state that legalizes drugs and bans firearms and firearms accessories is a communist state. California and Colorado, say hello to each other and kiss.
It seems as if you are confusing Denver/Boulder and Colorado.
Really guys? Govt agency with surplus $ and a computer. They are surfing porn sites.
Robert you fight the good fight. but you cant fix stupid and the kinds of people that believe that gun show loophole nonsense are just that: stupid.
And to help you point out stupid, Brian Malte, senior national policy director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence said this:
“…that’s less dangerous people walking around with guns.”
Fewer. Not less.
“Less dangerous” in this case would mean “not as dangerous.”
Could they actually be “fewer” and “less”? ha.
Yeah, 13600 sales THAT THEY KNOW ABOUT! How many firearms were transferred illegally to uneligible people in Colorado over the past year? What? Criminals dont bother with backround checks? But, but thats against the law!
We need to close the Stupid Democrat Loophole. For the children. And the adults. And puppies! ‘Cause everybody loves puppies! If it only saves one puppy . . . .
Note to Coloradans — this is what happens when you elect a brewpub operator to high government office. Next time, just pick a bum from off the street and you’ll get better government.
We didn’t elect him. The Boulder liberals, trust fund hippies, and carpet bagging Kalifornia transplants did.
Well, sure — but they didn’t fly those ballots in from Mars (although it may seem like it). Loopy got 51% of the vote in 2010. So to say that Coloradans didn’t elect him because you and your friends didn’t vote for him makes no sense.
But Colorado has a chance at redemption in November. Kick that @ssh0le out!
but they didn’t fly those ballots in from Mars …but the voters heads were most certainly there.
Build him an apartment in the Rocky Flats Plant.
From Connecticut to Colorado, gun owners love to whine and cry about infringement of their right to keep and bear arms by statist Democrats. However, the electoral numbers abundantly and repeatedly reveal that if conservatives would just get off their butts and exercise their right to vote, they wouldn’t have a RKBA problem to whine and cry about in the first place.
This is why I have zero sympathy for people of the slave states. They defiantly pretend that their battle cry is “Come and take it!”, when in reality it’s more like “Come and give it to me! You can put it anywhere you like!”
My wife was watching program on The Oprah channel last night about “gun violence” in Philadelphia. Aside from the FACT that many of the gun deaths of young black males were caused by an unending circle of violence and retribution–a cultural issue, not a “gun” issue, the journalist went into a gun store where she asked about the process for buying a gun. Pay your money, a call to the state, and with a clean record, you walk out with the gun. She then asked, what if I buy a gun for my boyfriend who has had issues in the past? He tells her, “well, then, you’ve just committed a felony.” And he says he tells his customers that, and has cameras recording transactions. Does that stop straw sales? Absolutely not–the show showed a tape of such a transaction. Do the police do anything about it? Not unless they catch a felon with a gun, in a city where the police seize 60 to 90 “illegal” firearms every weekend.
Who is fooling who? Or a better question, why do the legislators keep fooling themselves, and why are the antis fooled into believing that any of these laws effectuate change?
because they have to look like they are doing “something” so when they troll for money and votes, they can say they are the only ones doing “something”
So did the “journalist” buy a gun for her “friend?” If so, Oprah would be aiding and abetting a Federal felony, no? Or a co-conspirator therein?
Already been done:
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/338735/40-percent-myth-john-lott
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-continued-use-of-the-claim-that-40-percent-of-gun-sales-lack-background-checks/2013/04/01/002e06ce-9b0f-11e2-a941-a19bce7af755_blog.html
But what about the children?
Sorry, that’s all I got when their whole argument is based on lies.
What about the children?
Children? For the libtards children are a welfare ploy or are to be killed in utero.
Don’t bother providing facts to the supporters of Initiative 594 in Washington State. Their ears are covered.
If facts and data worked the issue would have been closed long ago. Remember it’s right there in the 2A plain as day.
This may be one of the cases where the use it or lose it mentality of government funding actually works well. Since $3M was budgeted and it wasn’t used all funding for this should be pulled and then close the office responsible for these checks as excess to need.
Ultimately, none of this matters. They’ll use the lack of background checks as “evidence” that criminals were scared off from trying to buy guns.
All they have is magical thinking.
Our opponents are, quite honestly, children. We are trying to have an adult conversation with a bunch of ten year-olds. Which is why every single time we drop facts on them they do a “nyah-nyah can’t catch me”.
We are governed by children, we are informed by children, and they claim to be doing it all for the children.
Where do I go if I want to live in a country of adults?
Please….don’t insult children like that. Most children are far more intelligent than that. It takes a decade or more of indoctrination to beat the common sense out of a child to make a liberal.
and a liberal public school education.
How about passing a law outlawing liars, criminals and people of low moral character from holding an elected or appointed office. Now that will make for some good change.
Unenforceable and ineffective. Those kinds of people don’t obey the law anyway.
12 member crew processing these checks over a year works out to ~25,000 man hours for 13600 checks or 4.3 checks per person per day. Assuming these are as efficiently run as NICS are, these sound like nice cushy taxpayer funded jobs.
What wasn’t mentioned and what I’d like to know is how many of the additional 260 denials were legit and recommended for prosecution, prosecuted and serving time where they no longer have access to guns. Based on the track record at a national level I would say close to 0 which would put even the “just one life” meme at risk.
Way to move the bar Colorado
or 4.3 checks per person per day. Say, that is a lot of work for a Government employee!
“The bottom line,” he said, “is even if one, or five, or 10, or 10,000 or 20,000 people are being blocked, that’s less dangerous people walking around with guns.” Sounds like a “reasonable and sensible” statement.” If it saves one life”, opens the door for all sorts of badly needed legislation. Let’s pass more laws and call it liberty. Remember, Freedom From Fear is one of the Four Freedoms. The Fifth Freedom is Freedom From Freedom.
I know, right? That PA Doctor saved at least 2 lives, assuming the psychos bloodlust would magically be sated after the 3rd murder, more likely a dozen. But those aren’t the lives progressives want to save.
We don’t need those petroleum jobs, we don’t need jobs, we don’t need to keep our doctor, we don’t need more than 7 rounds, we don’t need a gun. I decide what I need, not some unelected sociopath who thinks she knows better.
Gotta save these chillun! All my children knew how to use a gun, safely handle it, and accurately shoot it. Now, I am on to the next generation, as are they.
“assuming facts help”
When have facts ever helped anyone in politics? Or even mattered on the political stage. I love your optimism Mr. Farago. Keep fighting the righteous fight.
You know something about that “if it saves one life” argument? I’d like someone to ask them just how many other lives they are willing to sacrifice to save that single life? How many people do you allow to die just so you can feel good because “we” had to do something?
Quote: “…research arm of the Legislature that predicted about 420,000 new reviews over the first two years…”
Anyone else notice the 420? I’ve nothing against their legalization efforts, it just struck me as funny.
It tells me they were smoking something really good when they did their “research”.
Wait…what were we just talking about?
“We argued – and continue to argue – that 100 percent of firearms sales should not involve local, state or federal government oversight, as per the “shall not be infringed” part of the United States Constitution.”
First off, I love the Sam Elliot picture. Hilarious!
Now about the above quote. If you focus on the “infringed” part, then certainly it looks like the framers thought that there should be no gun restrictions (at least for law-abiding citizens). But what about the “well-regulated militia” part? Yes, I know that there was not a professional, standing army in colonial America, so the militia was made up of citizens. But there is still that “well-regulated” part.
With that in mind, I don’t think you can use the language of the 2A to assert that ANY restriction on gun ownership or sales is unconstitutional. And history shows that even the founding generation was not opposed to all gun restrictions (The political class has always been nervous when certain people–you know who–got their hands on guns).
I am not a 2A scholar. Hell, I’m not even a gun owner at this particular moment (though I do support firearms ownership and CCW). I’m new to TTAG and I’m a bit skeptical about some of the claims I’m seeing here. Not trying to pick any fights, so let me know where I’m in error. Thanks.
“But what about the “well-regulated militia” part? … But there is still that “well-regulated” part.”
You need to study up on what the word “regulated” meant when that phrase was written. “Regulated” was not used as it is now by statist, anti-liberty types.
Ok JR, will do. Thanks for the feedback.
As I understand it, in 18th-century parlance, a “well-regulated militia” meant a well-trained unit as opposed to an undisciplined mob, not a militia burdened by a host of federally-imposed restrictions.
No you would be incorrect (wrong).
http://www.lectlaw.com/files/gun01.htm
militia – consisting of every swinging dick (no exemptions noted by those evil forefathers because of skin color).
well regulated – as determined by the members of whatever group they chose to belong. 3 guys decide on Brown Bess w/40round or all to have level 3A vest/.45 with 40rd/ and AR with 210rd. or the Town council decides they need a 9lb Napoleon with equipment/120mm the M120 mortar on the M1100 Trailer. Or Bugtussle County raise a company of Rangers equipped and trained as current US Army doctrine and TOE. All good but only the members get a say as to what is “well regulated”.
Come on, guys. Can’t you see just how many criminals were deterred by their new fancy laws? Looks to be about 400,000 of them, give or take a few.
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