We already know that 20 years after being implemented, 1994’s Brady Law remains an expensive and unmitigated failure. The elderly white supremacist that shot three people to death in Kansas City recently is just the latest example of that fact:
As a felon, F. Glenn Miller Jr. had no legal right to a gun.
What’s more, a gun dealer would face prison time for selling him a weapon.
Even a friend who gave or sold him guns would risk federal prison time for arming someone they knew or suspected was a felon.
Yet the proud racist and anti-Semite stands accused of firing both a shotgun and a handgun in the murder of three people at Jewish facilities in Overland Park last weekend.
So who put his finger on a trigger?
Investigators tracing the source of the guns allegedly used by the felon think he was aided by a straw buyer who could clear background checks likely to foil Miller, said a law enforcement official familiar with the case.
The law enforcement source, who insisted upon anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said local police and agents from the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives are trying to locate the middleman.
Such a gun-buying go-between represents a vexing problem for keeping firearms out of the hands of people like Miller who lost their Second Amendment rights when they became felons.
It’s one of the oldest truisms in the book: criminals break laws. Law-abiding people don’t.
Citizen control cults like Bloomberg’s latest mash-up “Everytown” keep pushing for more laws—so-called “universal” background checks as a precursor to registration is their latest goal—but the simple fact of the matter is that the government does not aggressively prosecute those who violate existing laws.
Criminals interviewed by researchers in prisons indicate that they obtain firearms through two primary avenues. The first source (about 30%) is the black market, where guns are obtained by criminals indirectly through theft and smuggling. The second source of criminal guns (about 40%) are those obtained by semi-direct straw purchases, where friends and family members of criminals who don’t have a criminal record of their own buy a firearm through gun dealers, and then illegally divert them to the criminals. Only about 10% obtained their guns through direct theft from a legal gun owner.
The contributors to both of the most pipelines are committing felonies, but the federal government simply refuses to prosecute the most important avenue, straw-purchasing cases that are almost slam-dunks.
Gun controllers always want more laws passed to make gun ownership more onerous on the law-abiding. Oddly, they don’t campaign nearly as much to ensure that existing laws are enforced.
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