Anti-Gun Research ~ Background Checks Just the First Step

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Anti-gun researcher admits background checks just first step,” a Bearing Arms headline to an article by Second Amendment broadcast and online journalist Cam Edwards notes.

He’s referring to a New York Magazine interview with “Bloomberg Professor of American Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health” Daniel Webster, who “came out and all but admitted that even ‘universal background checks’ don’t serve as a much of a deterrent to violent criminals and argued that the imposition of any background check law is just the first step towards other, even more draconian restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms.”

“What we find is when you couple comprehensive background checks with a licensing system is where you tend to see beneficial effects,” Webster admits.

So background checks aren’t enough. The prohibitionists want more. They’ll take what they can get now in increments, but once that beachhead has been secured, they’ll use it to launch their next attack into deeper territory. That’s forever been their M.O., something you’d think even an establishment Republican would be smart enough to realize before signing onto any more “bipartisan deals.”

In this case, Webster is repeating an infringement he’s been calling for – for years.

“When you deny high-risk people access to guns, the evidence shows that saves lives,” he claimed 10 years ago. “And when you regulate all gun sales, fewer guns get diverted to criminals.”

“Regulate”?  “A licensing system”?

The National Institute of Justice touched on that in its 2013 “Summary of Select Firearm Violence Prevention Strategies” section on “Universal Background Checks”:

“Effectiveness depends on the ability to reduce straw purchasing, requiring gun registration…”

What are the grabbers, from the president on down, making no secret of wanting to ban now? And what can licensing and registration enable?

And, of course, with Joe Biden telling everyone a 9 mm (except for Hunter’s?) will blow their lungs out so we can’t have those, either, is as good a time as any to remind everyone that banning handguns was an original goal that the antis have never given up:

We’re going to have to take one step at a time, and the first step is necessarily — given the political realities — going to be very modest. . . .  [W]e’ll have to start working again to strengthen that law, and then again to strengthen the next law, and maybe again and again.  Right now, though, we’d be satisfied not with half a loaf but with a slice.  Our ultimate goal — total control of handguns in the United States — is going to take time. . . .  The first problem is to slow down the number of handguns being produced and sold in this country.  The second problem is to get handguns registered.  The final problem is to make possession of all handguns and all handgun ammunition-except for the military, police, licensed security guards, licensed sporting clubs, and licensed gun collectors-totally illegal.

Richard Harris, A Reporter at Large: Handguns,  New Yorker, July 26, 1976, at 53, 58 (quoting Pete Shields, founder of Handgun Control, Inc.) (boldface added, italics in original).

But note they always couch the latest incremental infringement as “a good first step.” Some of us have been warning about this insidious subterfuge, dependent on media-engineered public ignorance, for decades:

But for the gun controllers, that’s not all bad– because based on results, each tragedy provides a new opportunity to exploit, a new press conference to hold, a new law to enact, or a new lawsuit to file. They’ll propose further restrictions under the bald-faced pretense that it’s “a good first step.” They won’t tell you that there are already over 20,000 gun laws on the books at the federal, state and municipal level that are consistently ignored by all but the law-abiding.

“A good first step…” the clueless segment of our victim pool populace will drone back at the proposal of law number 20,001.

“One helluva good first step– keep ‘em coming!” agree illegally armed criminal predators, emboldened with each new law that renders their prey increasingly vulnerable…

As long as the lies work, the enemies of freedom will keep using them. So, it’s up to gun owners to share the truth with whoever will listen.

About David Codrea:

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.