THE Gun Thread

[Thumpalumpacus]

Your dogmatic faith in background checks rivals the Jebus freak' s faith that they will party with their invisible friend for eternity.

Where did you get the idea that I have "dogmatic faith" in them? I personally believe that they can be a help, but they are not a panacea.

A background check only shows PAST behavior. 
It will show you who has been a bad person - and we assume from that they will be bad in the future. Right?

Right. But with your assertion that "law-abiding citizens" should not have to submit to background checks means that you're willing to take someone at their word that they have no violent convictions on their record, which I think is (as noted above) both circular reasoning, and more than a touch naive. People do lie, you know.

So checking EVERYBODY - (and the vast majority will show up as good to buy guns. Right?) wastes the majority of the law enforcement resource.

Yet you cannot know who is law-abiding without the checking, so the upshot of your opinion is that no one would be able to know if they're selling to a criminal.

It would be far better to simply make it possible for the average person to be able to access a list of potentially bad people.

Well, let's examine who would compile that list, and on what basis, and how everyone might be able to access this database. You go first, since you're dead-set against government tyranny. Which private authority would you entrust with this sweeping power, and how would you verify that its judgements are accurate? Define "potentially bad" while you're at it? And what if they already own a gun or three?

Background checks have at the very least the benefit of objectivity: a conviction is a fact, not an estimate.