PD Editorial: Background checks vote is overdue

A widely circulated photo shows Dylann Roof posing with a Confederate battle flag and a semi-automatic handgun.

In the two weeks since Roof shot nine people to death in a Charleston, S.C., church, opposition to public displays of the Civil War banner hardened, Wal-Mart and other mega merchants halted sales of the flag and flag-themed merchandise, and a small army of waffling politicians hustled to catch up with their constituents.

Compared to the uproar over the flag, there’s been barely a whimper about the weapon in the photo.

In his first public remarks, President Barack Obama tacitly acknowledged that the rampage at Emmanuel AME Church isn’t any more likely to break a congressional stalemate on gun control than the slaughter of 20 small children at Sandy Hook Elementary School - or any of the dozen other mass murders during his tenure.

“At some point,” Obama said, “we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this kind of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. It is in our power to do something about it.”

Just as a National Rifle Association board member’s Twitter post blaming the church pastor - who, as a state legislator, opposed a concealed weapons bill - for the Charleston slayings, Obama tried to walk back his remarks, telling a San Francisco audience a day later: “I refuse to act as if this is the new normal.”

Unfortunately, his resolve isn’t shared by the Republican leaders in Congress.

No law will preclude violence, but a bill crafted after Sandy Hook by Reps. Mike Thompson, a St. Helena Democrat, and Peter King, a New York Republican, would make it harder for criminals and psychopaths to purchase firearms.

They want to eliminate a gaping loophole in the federal law requiring a background check prior to a weapons sale. The decades-old law covers stores such as Wal-Mart (which sells firearms if not Confederate flags) but exempts sales at gun shows and via the Internet or classified ads.

Three years after Sandy Hook, Thompson’s bill has yet to get a vote in the House.

“If the Republican leadership has a better idea to cut down on gun violence, let’s see it,” he said in a speech on the House floor last week. “If not, let’s bring common sense, bipartisan reforms like my bill to expanded criminal background checks up for a vote.”

Public opinion polls show broad support for background checks, but too many politicians are unwilling to take on unrelenting Second Amendment activists who, among other things, insist that citizens routinely use guns to thwart criminals. Some advocates say that occurs 2.5 million times a year in the United States – almost 7,000 times every day.

That claim doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Indeed, a study of FBI data found just 259 justifiable homicides by private citizens using firearms in 2012, the most recent year for which records are available. By comparison, the Violence Policy Center study found 8,342 criminal homicides involving firearms that same year.

Moreover, the study found that intended victims of violent crimes defended themselves with a firearm in 0.8 percent of attempted and completed incidents between 2007 and 2011. For property crimes, the self-defense figure dropped to 0.1 percent.

We have no quarrel with citizens protecting themselves from criminals, and, regardless of the NRA’s outlandish claims, routine background checks aren’t a means for seizing firearms from law-abiding citizens.

So before waving the white flag on improving gun laws, weigh the facts about gun violence and self-defense.