PA Bill Number: HB335

Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.

Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...

Last Action: Removed from table

Last Action Date: May 1, 2024

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Recent headlines underscore myth of UBC (Universal Background Checks) as crime-fighting tool :: 04/07/2015

Yesterday’s Seattle Police Blotter reported the early Sunday arrest of four guys with three handguns in the Belltown area, and one of them was stolen while another was tucked in the waistband of a guy who did not have a concealed pistol license.

A story this morning on Michigan Live tells about 17 service pistols and shotguns listed as stolen from the Flint Police Department. One of them was a .45-caliber Smith & Wesson semi-auto, found by a 15-year-old whose friend reportedly tried to use it to rob a 15-year-old drug dealer a couple of days later. As the two young teens ran, the pistol discharged and wounded the teen in the leg.

Last Friday, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Seattle reported that a 36-year-old man from Monroe, Snohomish County, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for stealing 29 guns from a Fred Meyer and “selling them to criminals.” Matthew Elshaug pleaded guilty to several charges last October, including being a felon in possession of firearms.

What’s the common thread in all of these cases? No background checks. A stolen gun in Seattle didn’t change hands legitimately, and neither did all the firearms sold to criminals by that guy in Monroe. Guns stolen from a single Michigan Police Department certainly aren’t involved in legitimate commerce, especially when used by a clumsy teen in an apparent drug rip-off.

UPDATE: By remarkable coincidence, anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s “Everytown for Gun Safety” this morning sent another of its e-mail funding begs, this time to raise money to fight for background check legislation in Oregon.

The letter, over the name of Portland resident Robert Yuille, tells about the slaying of his wife, Cindy, at the Clackamas Town Center in December 2012 by Jacob Tyler Roberts, a 22-year-old man who stole the AR-15 rifle he used. There was no background check involved in that theft. The proposed Oregon law would not have prevented that shooting.

A second victim was Steven Forsyth, 46, who died from a gunshot wound to the head. The shooting may have been interrupted by a legally-armed citizen, but that has been debated. Nick Meli drew his sidearm but didn’t take a shot because there were apparently innocent bystanders behind Roberts, who did stop shooting, ran down a hall and took his own life.

Google the term “stolen guns recovered.” Examiner did so this morning and came up with thousands of possible references, including a story from last month in Delaware, where a guy was arrested after creating a disturbance. He had a loaded Beretta 9mm in his waistband, and that gun had been reported stolen from a local shopping center the previous day.

Regardless how often one repeats it, criminals do not obtain firearms through legal channels. The notion that a so-called “universal background check” law is going to prevent them from getting guns is at best self-delusional, say Second Amendment activists. So what if there have been well over a million gun purchase denials under the Brady law, named for the late James Brady, whose widow, anti-gun crusader Sarah Brady, passed away last Friday? That doesn’t mean all of those supposed criminals didn’t ultimately get their hands on a gun anyway.

Gun prohibitionists repeatedly call for “a dialogue” on gun control proposals, yet how honest can any such dialogue be when they won’t acknowledge the obvious? This suggested “dialogue” invariably translates to some kind of negotiation effort, and there is really nothing to negotiate. Bad guys get guns through typically illegitimate means, and eroding the Second Amendment rights of good guys isn’t going to prevent that.

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