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How Necessary Is It To Require A Background Check To Buy A Handgun?
Gun-Rights advocates in Virginia are gearing up to challenge the current background check requirement to purchase a handgun. Gun-Rights advocate want to loosen criteria that are a part of the criminal background check. Here’s the gist of the article I read:
Virginia’s criminal background check system for gun purchases, the first of its kind in the nation, is being targeted for elimination, reports the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. Gun-rights advocates have lobbied Gov. Bob McDonnell to scrap the program, arguing that it is redundant because a federal background check system can replace it. Gun-control groups say doing so would take a valuable law enforcement tool away from state police and undermine state gun laws.
Efforts to cancel the state’s 22-year-old background check system, known as the Virginia Firearms Transaction Program, could be debated in the coming legislative Assembly session. Republicans will control state government for the first time since 2001 and a push to loosen state gun laws is expected. Some of those supporting looser controls on guns are the National Rifle Association, which has urged Virginians to lobby McDonnell on background checks, and the Virginia Citizens Defense League. The original “long” article can be found HERE.
Source Article For Shortened Article
I am a huge supporter of the 2nd amendment which reads:
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” (Findlaw)
Okay, so here’s my spin. The Gun Control Act of 1968 restricts gun ownership for the following groups:
- Persons under indictment for, or convicted of, any crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding on year;
- Fugitives from justice;
- Persons who are unlawful users of, or addicted to, any controlled substance;
- Persons who have been declared by a court as mental defectives or have been committed to a mental institution;
- Illegal aliens, or aliens who were admitted to the United States under a nonimmigrant visa;
- Persons who have been dishonorably discharged from the Armed Forces;
- Persons who have renounced their United States citizenship;
- Persons subject to certain types of restraining orders; and
- Persons who have been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. (About.com)
I think that background checks to purchase a firearm actually infringes on the right of a U.S. citizen and is therefore a violation of the U.S. constitution. I know that statement sounds like I have lost my damned mind but rest assured, there is method to my madness.
A background check can locate information such as whether or not one has a felony conviction, if a person has specific kind of restraining order, if a court has ruled that a person has a mental disorder, one’s immigration as well as one’s citizenship status and one’s military discharge information. Although those seem like very valid issues to investigate, people who fall into those areas are still going to get a firearm if they wish to carry. The stipulations listed in the Gun Control Act only apply to weapons shops that sell their merchandise in accordance with the federal laws, not those who are involved in the illegal gun trade industry.
As far as mental illness is concerned, unless the court system has cause to document that one has a mental illness, one’s mental health status is not available though a standard background check. One of the reasons that one’s mental health status is not available in public record is the Health Insurance Privacy And Portability Act (HIPPA). HIPPA is very specific regarding the sharing of medical records, so if a person chooses to seek help for mental health issues or treatment for substance abuse, that information will not come back on the background check.
My point is, long story short, gun control laws technically only apply to law abiding citizens. those who don’t meet the criteria for legal possession of a firearm, will find other means to purchase a weapon and live their life in the spirit of the 2nd amendment. Furthermore, it’s my belief that gun control laws restrict the rights of those who follow the law and will have no bearing on the person who carries an illegal weapon unless they are caught.
Tell me what you think…..
Supreme Court Reviews Constitutionality Of Life Sentences For Juvenile Murders
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide the constitutionality of sentencing juveniles as young as 14 to life without parole in homicide cases.
The justices granted review of appeals in two cases involving 14-year-olds, one in Alabama and one in Arkansas, who are serving such sentences. Both are represented by the Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery, Ala., group that argues such sentences are “cruel and unsual punishments” prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.
The Supreme Court, in a 2005 decision in Roper v. Simmons, prohibited the death penalty for offenders who committed their crimes before age 18. In a 2010 ruling known as Graham v.Florida, the court held that a sentence of life in prison without parole for a juvenile offender in a non-homicide case was unconstitutional.
The recent cases on juvenile sentencing have been watched closely by many educators and child-development experts because they have turned to some degree on advances in knowledge about adolescent brain development.
“Developments in psychology and brain science continue to show fundamental differences between juvenile and adult minds,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the court majority last year in Graham. “Juveniles are more capable of change than are adults, and their actions are less likely to be evidence of irretrievably depraved character than are the actions of adults.”
“Under this court’s reasoning in [Roper] and Graham, the identical analysis which led to the results in those case logically compels the conclusion that consigning a 14-year-old child to die in prison through a life-without-parole sentence categorically violates the Eighth and 14th Amendments,” said Bryan A. Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative in one of the briefs.
Stevenson stressed similar themes in urging the high court to take up the issue of life-without-parole sentences in the juvenile homicide cases, Miller v. Alabama (No. 10-9646) andJackson v. Hobbs (No. 10-9647).
“Relative to the cognition of adults and even older adolescents, young teenage judgment is handicapped in nearly every conceivable way,” Stevenson said. “Young adolescents lack life experience and background knowledge to inform their choices; they struggle to generate options and to imagine consequences; and, perhaps for good reason, they lack the necessary self-confidence to make reasoned judgments and stick by them.”
The Alabama case involves Evan Miller, who was 14 in 2003 when he was convicted with another adolescent of starting a fire that killed a neighbor with whom he had an altercation. Miller was convicted as an adult of capital murder and sentenced to life without parole.The other boy received a lesser sentence in exchange for testifying against Miller.
The Arkansas case involves Kuntrell Jackson, who was 14 in 1999 when he participated with two older boys in the robbery of a video store. Although it was one of the other boys who shot and killed a store clerk with a shotgun, Jackson was convicted of capital murder and aggravated robbery, and the trial judge was legally barred from considering his level of involvement, so Jackson received a life-without-parole sentence.
The appeal on Jackson’s behalf asks the high court to consider whether a state’s mandatory sentencing policy for accomplices to murder violates the Eighth Amendment when it is imposed on a 14-year-old.
Both Alabama and Arkansas urged the court not to take up the cases.
Alabama said in a brief that last year’s Graham ruling was “of sufficiently recent vintage” that no consensus has developed in the states about the imposition of life-without-parole sentences for juvenile homicide offenders.
Stevenson said in his briefs that Miller and Jackson are two of 73 juveniles who are serving such sentences nationwide, and 18 states have imposed such sentences on children 14 or younger.
“Internationally, the United States is the only country in the world where death in prison sentences have been imposed on young adolescents,” he says in the brief.
The cases will likely be argued next spring and decided by the end of June.
