Here's more evidence supporting the idea that anti-gun groups are missing the real problem.

Who's the among the MOST responsible for fugitives and wanted criminals obtaining firearms?   Law Enforcement!

 USA Today has revealed this week that while anti-gun groups are seeking to pile on more and more restrictions on law-abiding citizens,  a simple oversight by local and state law enforcement officials is resulting in tens of thousands of fugitives illegally buying guns. If you're a wanted or convicted felon,  no guns allowed.  It's pretty simple.

NO, we're not trying to throw police, state patrol and sheriffs under the bus.  But a simple procedure can prevent criminals from walking into stores,  especially pawn shops, and buying a gun.  From USA Today:

"Millions of fugitives can pass undetected through federal background checks and buy guns illegally because police departments across the country routinely fail to put their names into a national database that tracks people on the run from the law."   (bold lettering added for emphasis).

Local and state law enforcement officials are supposed to report felony fugitives and warrants to the FBI.  That places them on the national "no gun buy" list, and informs the FBI these people are wanted criminals.   But once a fugitive leaves a state, agencies are often reluctant to pursue them (often due to lack of resources) and many times that person is never reported to the FBI.

So, a criminal could possibly commit a felony in Washington,  then conceivably drive to Oregon, or Montana or other states, and buy a gun.  Because they're not on the FBI felony list, nobody knows they're wanted!  They will actually pass the back round check.  A handful of states do stringently report any and all fugitives to the FBI, but many do not.

After the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting that killed 32 people, states poured more information into the FBI national database, including controversial mental health histories, and other data critics deemed intrusive or unnecessary.   But the issue of unreported fugitives was largely ignored.   Instead of addressing the real issues,  normal law-abiding citizens were hit with even more attempted restrictions, and anti-gun groups stepped up their rhetoric.  This has been repeated each time there's been a national shooting tragedy.

The USA Today story shows  tens of thousands of gun-related crimes could have been prevented by simply making sure fugitives are reported to the FBI correctly, making it much harder for them to get their hands on a firearm.  According to data from the USA Today story,  hundreds of fugitives were found to have purchased multiple guns, some as many as four or five.

But all we see now are anti-gun groups  trying to squeeze more and more legal, law-abiding citizens into giving up or being unable to possess a firearm - which is our CONSTITUTIONAL right.

Anti-gun groups think the answer is to add more  back-round checks.  In the case of the controversial Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility (WAGR) who's ads and posts you keep seeing on Facebook, they're also trying to regulate and oversee private gun sales and continue to restrict our rights to gun ownership.  With them, it's  not about safety, it's about control and disarming the population, plain and simple.

If WAGR and others were truly about gun safety and crime prevention,  they would have joined the fight to make sure this under reporting problem would have been fixed years ago.

We would see a significant decrease in gun related crimes and violence if WANTED FUGITIVES - not law-abiding citizens - were reported to the FBI.

 

 

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