Tell Congress: Stop Allowing Criminals to Buy Guns

There are some things you wouldn't want a convicted felon to get a hold of — keys to the back door, bank account information, deadly weapons. While banks are getting better and better at protecting your accounts — even I have some trouble remembering if my site key is a teddy bear or a blue heron — the federal government is still allowing convicted felons to buy guns.

Since the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968, it's been illegal for a convicted felon to possess a firearm. The next logical legislative step is to make it illegal for convicted felons to buy guns, which the federal government did. Well, partly did. It required arms dealers to register with the government and conduct background checks. But what they left out were the private sales at gun shows, meaning that anyone — regardless of criminal history or mental condition — can go in, find a private seller and walk away with a gun.

Watch this video from ABC to get a sense of how easy it is. They accompanied the brother of one of the girls slain at Virginia Tech to a gun show, where he bought a trunk-load of guns. When the murdered girl's brother goes to buy a semi-automatic assault weapon, he was told, "Cash is all you need."

In a poorly-masked attempt to prevent the implementation of even the slightest control on firearms, gun fanatics — well that's a little strong, let's call them gun huggers — say federal regulation of the private sale of guns is an invasion of privacy. So I guess the federal government should butt out when it comes to selling drugs, prostitutes, toxic phantom securities or children for forced labor. In the words of one protector of privacy and the unmonitored proliferation of firearms: "No free society can accept that standard of 'privacy.'" (Visit the blog to experience the prodigious use of sarcastic quotes, angry italics and the phrase "so called.")

Advocates for the deregulated freedom to privately sell everything even deadly weapons jab their fingers excitedly at statistics citing the minimal use of gun show weapons in crimes. Here's a much-used favorite from the NRA's website, which declares, "Previous federal studies have found few criminals using gun shows." For evidence, gun-huggers cite a  2000 Bureau of Justice Statistics study, "Federal Firearms Offenders, 1992-98,” which found only 2% of federal prison inmates bought their gun from a gun show. A 1997 National Institute of Justice study likewise reported less than 2% of criminals’ guns come from gun shows.

It's true, a majority of criminals come by their weapons illegally. But that's not a good excuse to let them buy them legally. There's a slippery slope there — let's make murder legal! People will do it anyway. Last time I checked, that was called anarchy.

Those who wish to close the gun show loophole do have a tendency to inflate the actual correlation between unregulated gun show sales to criminal activity. But while most criminals obtain their weapons illegally, even a small percentage of legal purchases by convicted felons and the mentally unstable are unacceptable.

Allowing unregulated gun sales props up a dangerous culture that deeply corrupts society. Anyone pushing to close the gun loop hole only has to reference quotes like this one used by "U.S. News," from the journal of one of the killers at Columbine high school: "If we can save up about 200$ real quick and find someone who is 21+ we can go to the next gun show and find a private dealer and buy ourselves some bad-ass AB-10 machine pistols. [C]lips for those things can get really f***ing big too."

In the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, many of the states have unsuccessfully been calling for legislation to end the loophole. We've launched an action here on Change.org to tell the House and Senate to take action. Sign the petition and help us take a step toward changing our dangerous gun laws.

Photo Credit: LCPL JORDAN F. SHERWOOD, USMC