Nearly Half of Americans Are Now Covered By Universal Gun Background Checks, But Giant Loopholes Rem

Private transactions, exceedingly slow reviews, and laws that don’t recognize the threat from abusers all pose steep challenges to keeping firearms away from people who can’t legally possess them.

 

David Conley couldn’t pass a background check to buy a gun. He was a convicted drug user and a domestic abuser. In one case, his then-girlfriend, Victoria Jackson, said he held a knife to her throat and wrapped a cord around her baby’s neck.

 

Despite his criminal history, Conley managed to buy a gun anyway from someone he met online. Two weeks later, Conley bound Jackson, her new partner, and her six children in their Texas home and shot each of them in the head.

 

The background check system is a mammoth matrix of databases and human screeners that vet millions of gun buyers every year, a safeguard meant to make sure only responsible, law-abiding citizens acquire firearms. But there are big holes in many places that are easy for people who are prohibited from owning a gun to exploit. The largest gap: Federal law does not require background checks on the private sale or transfer of firearms. According to a forthcoming survey by researchers at Harvard University, roughly 40 percent of the country’s gun owners say they obtained their last firearm without undergoing a background check.

 

Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have expanded background checks to private sales. On Election Day, Nevada became the nineteenth state to do so.

 

Supporters of tighter gun restrictions often point to polling that has found as many as nine in 10 Americans support universal checks as evidence that increased scrutiny on buyers and sellers enjoys broad, bipartisan support. But vote totals from the two statewide balloting initiatives on Election Day suggest public opinion is may be more evenly divided when it comes to actually implementing the policy.

 

The Nevada measure passed by a narrow margin, even after supporters poured $18 million into advertisements designed to ensure its passage (The National Rifle Association, in one of few Election Day setbacks, spent $6 million in a losing effort).

 

In Maine, a ballot initiative that would have subjected private sales to the same checks as those required at licensed dealers was defeated by voters 52 percent to 48 percent. It’s fate may have been sealed by an additional requirement that would have also required checks on “transfers,” such as loaning out or gifting a gun.  

 

New federal legislation designed to close loopholes is highly unlikely under a Trump administration. The president-elect says he wants to “fix the system,” but opposes expanding it, a line that echoes the NRA’s position.