To help prevent dangerous criminals from purchasing deadly weapons, State Sen. Jill Schupp, D-Creve Coeur, has filed Senate Bill 799 to make it illegal to buy a firearm in Missouri without passing a background check conducted by a licensed firearms dealer.
“Background checks are a common sense way to help to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals,” Sen. Schupp said.
“Unfortunately, under Missouri’s current gun laws, criminals can avoid a background check by purchasing a firearm online or at a gun show. Requiring background checks for gun purchases would uphold lawful citizens’ Second Amendment rights while stopping criminals from getting deadly weapons.”
Currently, federal law does not require a background check when guns change hands among individuals. Only transfers conducted by licensed dealers are subject to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Despite overwhelming public support for requiring background checks for all gun purchases, a study by Northeastern University and the Harvard School of Public Health found 22-40 percent of gun transfers nationwide still occur without a background check.
Senator Schupp’s legislation would make the transfer of a firearm without a background check a misdemeanor, subject to a fine up to $1,000 or six months imprisonment. Prior to 2007, Missouri required local law enforcement officials to conduct background checks on all transfers of handguns. The nonpartisan John Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research reports that Missouri’s firearms homicide rate increased 23 percent after that law was repealed in 2007.
For more information on Sen. Schupp’s legislation, visit her official Missouri Senate website at www.senate.mo.gov/schupp.
4 comments:
"It's a trap."
The key is this language from the exceptions that was cut and pasted from Bloomberg's standard language as first used in Washington state:
"A person who is loaned a firearm solely for the purpose of shooting at targets, if the loan occurs on the premises of a properly licensed target facility...."
In Washington state, and as far as I know Missouri, there's no such legal concept as "a properly licensed target facility". These "flypaper" laws are specifically designed to end America's gun culture by hindering the creation of new gun owners. We don't have a problem with peaceable gun users, and to suggest they will deter criminals using guns to break much more strongly punished laws is laughable.
But the legislature and governor have been moving towards gun grabbing in the last few years, so getting them to betray their base would do wonders for the Missouri Democratic party, and hurt Trump in 2020, he palpably wants to grab guns as well.
"Prior to 2007, Missouri required local law enforcement officials to conduct background checks on all transfers of handguns."
A proud legacy of our post-reconstruction KKK years, they weren't required to OK transfers. Only North Carolina continues to be this backward.
"The nonpartisan John Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research"
You expect us to believe a unit of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health doesn't have a fixed position on gun control? Billionaire Bloomberg is the single most important person in gun control today, spending tens of millions to buy state government like Colorado, and most recently Virginia (helped by two Obama judges picking a California academic to gerrymander the state legislative districts, which a quick look at the map of results clearly shows).
"reports that Missouri’s firearms homicide rate increased 23 percent after that law was repealed in 2007."
Of course, this is known nationwide as the Ferguson effect, coined by the St. Louis chief of police. It reversed a decades long decline in violent crime, quite an accomplishment for those who pretend that Black Lives Matter.
Very informative comments, but didn't you skip the part where Republicans passed the anti KKK gun control laws?
Wasn't that particular gun control law passed during the U.S. Grant administration?
"Wasn't that particular gun control law passed during the U.S. Grant administration?"
I do not know, Reconstruction ended with Grant's administration in early 1877, but Missouri went back to being controlled by Democrats earlier in 1873. See this chart with statewide positions and legislative house totals.
Post a Comment