Gun background checks are on pace to break record in 2019
Background checks on gun purchases in the U.S. are climbing toward a record high this year, reflecting what the industry says is a rush by people to buy weapons in reaction to the Democratic presidential candidates’ calls for tighter restrictions. By the end of November, more than 25.4 million background checks — generally seen as a strong indicator of gun sales — had been conducted by the FBI, putting 2019 on pace to break the record of 27.5 million set in 2016, the last full year President Barack Obama was in the White House. On Black Friday alone, the FBI ran 202,465 checks. Some analysts question how accurately the background check figures translate into gun sales, since some states run checks on applications for concealed-carry permits, too, and some purchases involve multiple firearms. But the numbers remain the most reliable method of tracking the industry. In the years since President Donald Trump took office, the industry has struggled through what has been referred to as the Trump Slump, a falloff in sales that reflected little worry among gun owners about gun control efforts. But with the 2020 presidential election less than a year out and virtually every Democratic candidate offering proposals to restrict access to firearms, fears appear to be driving up sales again. “The Trump Slump is real, but the politics of guns has changed a little bit over the last year,” said Adam Winkler, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law and an expert on gun rights and politics. “As we’re coming up upon another presidential election, Donald Trump is vulnerable, and the Democratic presidential contenders are falling all over themselves to propose more aggressive gun reforms than their opponents.” Trump has been viewed as one of the most gun-friendly presidents in modern history and has boasted of strong support from the National Rifle Association. He has addressed every one of its annual conventions since the 2016 campaign, and the powerful gun lobby pumped about $30 million into efforts to elect him. Still, hopes of expanded gun rights under Trump’s watch haven’t materialized. Legislation that would make it easier to buy silencers stalled in Congress. In addition, Trump pushed through a ban on bump stocks, which allow semiautomatic rifles to mimic machine-gun fire. The gunman who killed 58 people in Las Vegas in 2017 in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history used such a device. The industry has been going through one of its toughest periods, with some gunmakers, such as Remington Arms, filing for bankruptcy. More recently, Smith & Wesson’s parent company, American Outdoor Brands, announced plans to spin off its firearms unit, and Colt said it would suspend production of AR-15 rifles. Amid some high-profile mass shootings in recent years, especially the Parkland school attack in Florida that left 17 people dead, gun control advocates have gained some momentum. The crowded field of Democrats running for the White House has offered a variety of proposals to curtail gun rights. Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, whose state has seen repeated mass shootings this past year, went so far as to push for a mandatory buyback program for Arizona and Arkansas style rifles before dropping out of the race, stoking gun owners’ fears when he declared during a debate, “Hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.” The gun industry says the figures from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System reflect the Second Amendment politics of the White House race. “Americans are choosing to invest their hard-earned dollars in their ability to exercise their rights and buy the firearms they want before gun control politicians attempt to regulate away that ability,” said Mark Oliva, spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents the gun industry. Still, some experts took issue with the figures and said it is premature to declare the Trump Slump is over. “These numbers cannot be taken be taken at face value,” said Jurgen Brauer, a retired business professor and now chief economist at Small Arms Analytics, which consults on the firearms industry. Brauer said the numbers are increasingly skewed by states such as Kentucky that also run background checks when they issue or renew a permit to carry a concealed firearm. In October, for example, the state ran more than 280,000 checks through the NICS system for permits. “That number has been rising over time as increasingly states check with some frequency on their existing permits,” Brauer said. The NICS system was created after passage of the Brady Bill, which mandated background checks to buy a firearm. Convicted felons, domestic abusers and people who have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution are among those who cannot legally purchase a weapon. In 1999, the first full year the system was used, just over 9 million background checks were conducted. It was near the end of Democrat Bill Clinton’s second term and in the midst of a 10-year ban on assault rifles that expired in 2004. Background checks declined under President George W. Bush but picked up again in 2006 and have mostly risen since then, except for 2014 and 2017. In 2018, there were 26.18 million background checks. “Gunmakers are promoting the idea that you should buy these guns now because they may be banned in the future,” Winkler said. This story has been corrected to delete the number of seconds per background check on Black Friday. By Lisa Marie Pane Associated Press. Republished with the Permission of the Associated Press.
No mystery to Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s gun views
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh says he recognizes that gun, drug and gang violence “has plagued all of us.” Still, he believes the Constitution limits how far government can go to restrict gun use to prevent crime. As a federal appeals court judge, Kavanaugh made it clear in a 2011 dissent that he thinks Americans can keep most guns, even the AR-15 rifles used in some of the deadliest mass shootings. Kavanaugh’s nomination by President Donald Trump has delighted Second Amendment advocates. Gun law supporters worry that his ascendancy to America’s highest court would make it harder to curb the proliferation of guns. Kavanaugh has the support of the National Rifle Association, which posted a photograph of Kavanaugh and Trump across the top of its website. The Supreme Court has basically stayed away from major guns cases since its rulings in 2008 and 2010 declared a right to have a gun, at least in the home for the purpose of self-defense. Gun rights advocates believe Kavanaugh interprets the Second Amendment right to bear arms more broadly than does Kennedy. As a first step, some legal experts expect Kavanaugh would be more likely to vote for the court to hear a case that could expand the right to gun ownership or curtail a gun control law. Kavanaugh would be a “big improvement” over Kennedy, said Erich Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America. Kennedy sided with the majority in rulings in 2008 and 2010 overturning handgun possession bans in the District of Columbia and Chicago, respectively, but some gun rights proponents believe he was a moderating influence. “Kennedy tended to be all over the map” on the Second Amendment, Pratt said. Former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, the Arizona Democrat who was gravely wounded in a 2011 shooting at a constituent gathering, said in a written statement that Kavanaugh’s “dangerous views on the Second Amendment are far outside the mainstream of even conservative thought.” She predicted that Kavanaugh would back the gun lobby’s agenda, “putting corporate interests before public safety.” In his 2011 dissent in a case before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Kavanaugh argued that the district’s ban on semi-automatic rifles and its gun registration requirement were unconstitutional. That case is known as “Heller II” because it followed the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller striking down the city’s ban on handguns in the home. Kavanaugh said the Supreme Court held that handguns are constitutionally protected “because they have not traditionally been banned and are in common use by law-abiding citizens.” “Gun bans and gun regulations that are not longstanding or sufficiently rooted in text, history, and tradition are not consistent with the Second Amendment individual right,” he wrote in a point rejected by the majority. Critics contend Kavanaugh’s analysis is flawed because AR-15s were not around during the early days of the republic. In his dissent, Kavanaugh wrote that he had lived and worked in Washington for most of his life and was “acutely aware of the gun, drug, and gang violence that has plagued all of us.” He said few government responsibilities are more significant than fighting violent crime. “That said, the Supreme Court has long made clear that the Constitution disables the government from employing certain means to prevent, deter, or detect violent crime,” he wrote. He said it was unconstitutional to ban the most popular semi-automatic rifle, the AR-15, since it accounted for 5.5 percent of firearms by 2007 and over 14 percent of rifles produced in the U.S. for the domestic market. He said semi-automatic rifles had been commercially available since at least 1903, “are quite common in the United States” and the Supreme Court said in a 1994 ruling that they “traditionally have been widely accepted as lawful possessions.” Semi-automatic rifles were used in several mass shootings in recent years, including the February killing of 17 people at a Florida high school. Kavanaugh rejected the majority’s reasoning that semi-automatic handguns were sufficient for self-defense, saying: “That’s a bit like saying books can be banned because people can always read newspapers.” He belittled the description of the guns as “assault weapons,” saying that handguns could be called the “quintessential ‘assault weapons’ because they are used much more than other guns in violent crimes. He was equally dismissive of Washington’s gun registration protocol, saying it had not been traditionally required in the nation and “remains highly unusual today.” Still, Kavanaugh supported the ban on full automatics or machine guns, reasoning that they “were developed for the battlefield and were never in widespread civilian use.” In 2016, Kavanaugh dissented when two of his colleagues lifted an order blocking the city from enforcing a limit on issuing licenses to carry concealed firearms. The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence said the dissent shows Kavanaugh believes the district’s “good reason” requirement for concealed-carry permit applicants is unconstitutional. His views on that subject drew more scrutiny after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 days ago in a Hawaii case that people have the right to openly carry guns in public for self-defense. Phil Mendelson, a Democrat and chairman of the D.C. Council, said Kavanaugh’s dissent made clear that “his views on gun control are on the extreme side.” Councilmember Mary M. Cheh, a Democrat and professor of constitutional law at George Washington University, said she’s “worried about the shift to the right, for sure.” Some legal experts believe Kavanaugh’s confirmation make it more likely the court will hear another potentially groundbreaking Second Amendment case. Only four of nine justices need to vote in favor of reviewing a case. UCLA law school professor Adam Winkler, author of “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America,” said Kavanaugh could become that crucial fourth vote because three justices — Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr. — all have voiced support for the court to take on Second Amendment cases. Still, it takes five justices to win a
