Criminal Background Checks Expanded for Gun Show Loophole

On Thursday, two senate hearing rooms were packed to discuss the possibility of expanding the requirements of background checks for gun shows. The senate has tried for many years attempting to bass a bill to address the concern of the ‘gun show loophole.' Allowing a vote to be made in the Senate rather than relying on the committee for the decision.

The senate provided a number of different statistics in opposition to lesser requirements for background checks. They tried to prove that the bill proposal would be beneficial by reducing the crime rates while contravening on the rights of good law-abiding gun vendors.

National Rifle Association lobbyist Brian Judy said that the bill is proposed to expand the database for registered gun transactions. Allowing the government to have more knowledge of who is selling guns by performing background checks; where as senator Rodney Tom had rejected the idea that an expanded database was not the issue. His idea was that the conception of expanding the knowledge of registered sellers was actually an expansion of gun restrictions.

Sen. Tom also stated that it would require gun sellers to perform a regular amount of background checks which would prevent a sum of 2,400 gun sales to felons and to people with a history of mental illness located in the state of Washington. The opposition came when he stated that a study made by the federal government over ten years old now proved that less than one percent of gun related crimes came from gun shows.

Police chief of Seattle's Gil Kerlikowske said that gun shows often sells guns under the counter, meaning that the sale of the gun is undocumented and no background check was performed. This means that that statistic can not be liked from the ten year study and gun sales at shows.

Read more