Resolved: The United States should require universal background checks for all gun sales and transfer of ownership.
Pro Position
This resolution is clear and for the most part unambiguous. The Pro side of this debate requires a universal background check for all gun sales or transfer of ownership. Right now, the mechanism used for universal background checks is the NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System). NICS is a database system setup specifically for determining the legal eligibility of an individual to possess a gun. Moreover, the Pro supports any system of universal background checks which denies gun ownership to individuals who are legally disqualified from owning or possessing firearms. Further, and to be preemptive, the Pro recognizes the Second Amendment right to bear arm shall not be infringed but further notes that two centuries of rulings by the United States Supreme Court established under certain conditions individuals may be denied constitutional rights when it is deemed to be in the national or public interest. This is especially true when it is necessary to ensure the protection of life, liberty or property.
UBCs are Popular
Generally, an appeal to popularity is not necessarily a reason to support a position. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that an overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens support universal background checks (UBCs) as a condition for all gun sales.
Kertscher 2017:
Polling expert Steven Smith, a professor of social sciences and political science at Washington University in St. Louis, told us that the wording of questions in national surveys can vary and usually do not use the term "universal." But well over 80 percent, and sometimes over 90 percent, of respondents favor background checks for all gun sales, he said.
Polling experts Kathy Frankovic, a former consultant for CBS News, Karlyn Bowman at the American Enterprise Institute think tank and Charles Franklin at Marquette University Law School agreed that such results have been consistent.
It’s worth noting that some other recent polls didn’t ask specifically about a background check for every gun sale, but they asked similar questions and got similar results:
Pew Research Center (March 2017): "Please indicate whether you would strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose, or strongly oppose making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background checks." Favor or strongly favor: 84 percent.
Several years ago, in the months following the Sandy Hook School Shooting tragedy, support for background checks was high, even among gun-owners.
Johns Hopkins 2015:
Support for requiring background checks for all gun sales remained high, with 85 percent of gun owners and 83 percent of non-owners favoring the policy. In the 2013 survey, 84 percent of gun owners and 90 percent of non-owners supported background checks for all gun sales. Support for banning assault weapons among all respondents decreased from 69 percent in 2013 to 63 percent in 2015, and support for banning the sale of large capacity ammunition magazines decreased from 68 percent to 60 percent. Notably, the small erosion in support for these policies occurred almost entirely among non-gun-owners.
Moreover, those surveyed even supported additional requirements which go beyond current items checked by the NICS.
Johns Hopkins 2015:
In the 2015 survey, the majority of gun owners surveyed support prohibiting a person convicted of a serious crime as a juvenile from having a gun for 10 years (73 percent), prohibiting people who have been convicted of public display of gun in a threatening manner excluding self-defense from having a gun for 10 years (75 percent), and prohibiting people convicted of domestic violence from having a gun for 10 years (76 percent).
Similarly, the majority of gun owners (67 percent) also support allowing cities to sue licensed gun dealers when the gun dealer's sales practises allow criminals to obtain guns and requiring a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison for a person convicted of knowingly selling a gun to someone who cannot legally have one (71 percent).
Despite the fact Con may try to claim polls are unreliable or subject to biases, the polls may help give the judge confidence that a vote for the Pro side would be widely supported by others. Also, do not allow the Con side to claim that appeals to popularity are illegitimate and then allow them to read evidence that most people believe UBCs will not work.
Current Laws Leave Gaps
Currently the majority of states in the U.S. have no requirement for licensing or background checks for private sales of transfer of ownership of guns. Of those that do, many of them limit the requirement to certain types of guns such as handguns only or screening by in-state authorities in which it is not always clear if the NICS is accessed. Some of these states have imposed additional limitations which extend beyond those imposed through the NICS. All retail establishments which sell guns do so with possession of a Federal Firearms License (FFL) which requires an NICS check, however, a significant loophole exists when guns change hands "privately".
Freskos 2016:
While FFLs are required to conduct background checks, gun owners who only sell occasionally and aren’t trying to turn a profit are not. In 31 states, people can buy firearms from unlicensed sellers without disclosing anything about their past, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
A 2012 study of prison inmates convicted of gun crimes in 13 states found that almost all of those who were legally prohibited from owning firearms — 96 percent — obtained them from someone who didn’t conduct a background check.
Critics have dubbed this workaround the “gun show loophole,” but that term has drawn criticism for being too narrow, as weapons change hands under a variety of circumstances. Online sales have become increasingly popular.
If the online seller is a digital extension of brick-and-mortar licensed gun store, the buyer still must submit to a background check. But there are hundreds of thousands of private individuals who advertise and arrange sales online. These sellers use a number of websites designed specifically to facilitate in-person transactions, usually without a background check.
The current system is prone to failures for a variety of reasons. Incomplete records may cause uncertainties in whether or not an applicant should be deemed ineligible. Moreover, examiners have three days to make a determination. If no determination is made in that time, the sales is permitted. This was the case with Dylan Roof, who is accused of being the Charleston South Carolina, church shooter. Additionally, Freskos explains how inconsistencies in how crimes are recorded can be problematic.
Freskos 2016:
In most states, batterers will fail a background check if they have been convicted of domestic abuse charges or come under a restraining order — but typically only if the abuse was committed against a current or former spouse, someone they live with, or someone with whom they share a child. The gun prohibition doesn’t apply to abusers in many dating relationships, even though more victims are killed by a boyfriend or a girlfriend than a spouse.
California, Delaware, and more than a dozen other states have plugged the “boyfriend loophole” by extending the ban on guns sales to abusive dating partners. But federal legislation to do the same has stalled, leaving this loophole open in the majority of states.
Nearly Universal Now
A few years ago, pundits for stricter gun regulations were citing a statistic that up to 40% of all gun sales were being conducted without a UBC. It is now widely reported, according to the most recent survey information, that 22 percent (slightly more than 1 out of five) gun sales are carried out without a background check.
Masters, et al 2017:
Just 22% of current gun owners who acquired a firearm within the past two years did so without a background check, according to a new national survey by public health researchers at Harvard and Northeastern universities shared in advance with the Trace and the Guardian.
This statistic confirms that most gun owners are complying with laws and willingly buying guns under the requirements of a universal background check.
Masters, et al 2017:
Phil Cook, a prominent gun law researcher, said the new, smaller estimate did not undermine the argument that the US needs a federal law instituting universal background checks on gun sales. In fact, he said, the finding that a smaller number of guns are acquired without background checks could be an advantage for supporters of stricter gun control laws.
“The headline is that we as a nation are closer to having 100% of gun transactions with a background check than we might have thought,” says Cook, a gun violence researcher at Duke University who conducted the 1994 survey. “So, it’s more attainable, and cheaper, to pass a universal requirement than it would be if 40% of transactions were still being conducted without these screenings.”
The Pro position advocates closing the gaps ensuring 100% compliance with UBC requirements for all transactions involving guns. In consideration of the fact we are almost there now, we can argue that implementation of UBCs for all sales or transfer of ownership would not deny people their right to possess firearms nor would it be an undue burden on sellers or buyers.
UBCs Save Lives
Certainly not everyone who would fail a UBC and yet is still able to acquire a gun through a previously described loophole should be considered a high-risk for using the gun to commit a crime. Often the guns used to commit crimes are acquired legally under the control of UBCs. Moreover, Con will no doubt claim that many murders or crimes committed by individuals with guns, have passed a UBC. Nevertheless, this is not a reason to negate. The Pro claims, there is evidence that shows UBCs save lives and that is reason enough to close the gaps and loopholes.
The state of Missouri experienced a 16 percent increase in the number of murders after repealing its, "permit-to-purchase" law which required a background check.
Volsky 2014:
Using state-level murder data for the time period 1999–2012, researchers concluded that removing the licensing requirement contributed to an “additional 55 to 63 murders per year in Missouri between 2008 and 2012.” The increases occurred in the first full year after the repeal, during which the state saw “large increases in the number of guns diverted to criminals and in guns purchased in Missouri that were subsequently recovered by police in border states that retained their PTP laws.”
The analysts controlled “for changes in policing, incarceration, burglaries, unemployment, poverty, and other state laws adopted during the study period that could affect violent crime,” a press release for the study says. “This study provides compelling confirmation that weaknesses in firearm laws lead to deaths from gun violence,” said Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research and the study’s lead author. “There is strong evidence to support the idea that the repeal of Missouri’s handgun purchaser licensing law contributed to dozens of additional murders in Missouri each year since the law was changed.”
In light of the Johns Hopkins analysis linking the repeal of the Missouri law to an increase in the murder rate, studies by other sources show similar correlations with respect to domestic violence cases.
Swaminathan 2014:
Among the types of murder that spike when background checks aren't required are domestic-violence homicides. Though estimates vary, more than 40 percent of women murdered each year are killed by intimate partners, according to a study that appeared in the British medical journal The Lancet last year. More than half the women murdered each year are killed with firearms — and in nearly 75 percent of those deaths, the weapon is a handgun. Female victims of domestic abuse are five times more likely to be killed if their abuser owns a handgun.
An analysis of FBI data by the coalition Mayors Against Illegal Guns shows that in states where background checks are mandatory, 38 percent fewer women are killed by intimate partners each year. Some of the lowest female homicide rates in the country are found in states such as Illinois, Massachusetts and Hawaii, where background checks are required for all gun purchases, even for private transactions at places like gun shows.
And, suicide rates are higher in states with a higher percentage of gun owners.
Osterath 2017:
In US states with a high percentage of gun owners - like Montana - more people die in suicides than in states like Massachusetts, where there are fewer gun owners.
Having a gun at home increases the risk of suicide for everyone in that household by up to five times, researchers say.
"The evidence is overwhelming," Miller says. "People in Montana are not more suicidal than people in Massachusetts, they don't have a higher risk of depression or other types of mental illness. But what they have is a weapon that they can reach for in a moment of vulnerability from which there is no backing out and from which you don't get second chances."
Notably, drawing the link between gun ownership, UBCs and suicide rates is very inconclusive since official federal studies are practically non-existent. Osterath describes how Congress, no doubt influenced by various pro-gun lobbies, has failed to allocate sufficient funding to study the links.
Osterath 2017:
Public health issues, including injury prevention, fall under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC funds research at universities and institutes across the US. But they are barred from funding gun violence research, says Gretchen Goldman, a research director at the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit science advocacy organisation.
"In the 1990s there was a push by the National Rifle Association - the gun lobby essentially - to try to ban the CDC from researching gun violence," she says.
Republican congressman Jay Dickey inserted the ban into a 1996 Budget Bill, which has been renewed every year since then.
As a result, the US congress zeroed the dollars that the CDC was allowed to spend on gun research. And other government agencies have not stepped up to fill the gap.
Because federally financed studies have been effective outlawed, we rely on private studies sponsored by universities, think-tanks and various advocacy groups. While this impacts the ability of Pro to make a case, it makes clear that the Con side must rely on similar sources.
Try or Die
The Pro advocacy is clear. Universal Background Checks save lives by keeping guns out of the hands of those who have already been declared criminal, mentally unstable, or otherwise at risk of using guns to commit crimes. While UBCs are not perfect and while sometimes they may fail to prevent firearms crime, we have a moral obligation to take this small step which could potentially save thousands of lives. It's "try or die". Even if there is a 1% percent risk of solvency, we must affirm.
For all these reasons and more, we urge a Pro ballot.
Freskos, B (2016), Nearly Half of Americans Are Now Covered By Universal Gun Background Checks, But Giant Loopholes Remain, The Trace, Nov 11, 2016. Accessed 10/4/2017 at: https://www.thetrace.org/2016/11/gun-background-checks-loopholes/
Johns Hopkins (2015), Large Majority of Americans—Including Gun Owners—Support Stronger Gun Safety Policies, Johns Hopkins, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Jun 3, 2015, accessed: 10/4/2017 at: https://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2015/large-majority-of-americans-includin-gun-owners-support-stronger-gun-safety-policies.html
Kertscher, T (2017) Do 90% of Americans support background checks for all gun sales?, Politifact Wisconsin, Oct 3, 2017, accessed 10/5/2017 at:
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2017/oct/03/chris-abele/do-90-americans-support-background-checks-all-gun-/
Masters K, The Trace, Beckett L (2017), Just one in five Americans obtains gun without background check, survey finds, The Guardian, Jan 2, 2017, accessed 10/4/2017 at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/02/guns-state-background-checks-study
Osterath, B (2017), US researchers say funding for gun research is non-existent but it would save lives, Deutsche Welle, Feb 20, 2017, accessed 10/4/2017 at: http://www.dw.com/en/us-researchers-say-funding-for-gun-research-is-non-existent-but-it-would-save-lives/a-37638095
Swaminathan, N (2014), Gun background checks could save women’s lives, Al-Jazeera America, Mar 12, 2014, accessed 10/4/2017 at: http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/fault-lines/FaultLinesBlog/2014/3/13/domestic-homicideinamerica.html
Volsky, I (2014), This New Study Proves That Background Checks Save Lives, Think Progress, Feb 15, 2014, accessed 10/4/2017 at: https://thinkprogress.org/this-new-study-proves-that-background-checks-save-lives-b93944151276/
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