by Thomas Lucente

And so it begins.

The gun grab.

Liberal politicians keep telling us they don’t want to take away our guns.

“I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away,” President Barack Obama has said.

“There’s no way Uncle Sam can go find out whether you have a gun,” Vice President Joe Biden said.

Tell that to David Lewis, 35, of Erie County, New York.

On April 1, Lewis received a letter from the New York State Police demanding he turn in his guns or police officers would show up at his door to take them from him.

by Chad D. Baus

As I listened to the play by play coverage of the Boston bombing terrorists’ rampage through the streets of the city late Thursday night and Friday morning, I knew it was only a matter of time before the media began on their quest to find out where the two Chechen terrorists got the guns they used to kill one police officer and wound another. Many journalists, I knew, would pursue this line of investigation with the hope that the answer could be used to push for more gun control.

On Sunday, Reuters published an article entitled “Boston bombing suspects did not have valid handgun licenses.”

From the article:

The two brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombings, who police say engaged in a gun battle with officers early Friday after a frenzied manhunt, were not licensed to own guns in the towns where they lived, authorities said on Sunday.

In the confrontation with police on the streets of a Boston suburb, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were armed with handguns, at least one rifle and several explosive devices, authorities say.

But neither brother appears to have been legally entitled to own or carry firearms where they lived, a fact that may add to the national debate over current gun laws. Last week, the U.S. Senate rejected a bill to expand background checks on gun purchases, legislation that opponents argued would do nothing to stop criminals from buying guns illegally.

Indeed, the gun control laws which were put in place in Massachusetts were put into law with the promise that they would ensure that the wrong people did not have access to guns.

The article, however, notes that Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who was killed in the shootout with police, would have been required to apply for a gun license with the local police department where he lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts. But according to Cambridge Police Department spokesman Dan Riviello there is no record of him having done so.

Even if he had earlier received a gun license from somewhere outside Cambridge, that license would have to be registered with Cambridge police upon becoming a resident of the city, Riviello said. In Massachusetts, gun licenses are issued by municipal police departments.

“There is no record of him having a license to carry,” Riviello told Reuters.

by C. D. Michel

In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, America’s gun control movement was momentarily reenergized. Many reasoned voices sought solutions for such events, which unimpassioned analysis showed to mainly be a mental health issue. Gun control groups also concurred on the mental health aspect, then squandered that brief moment of collaboration by tossing their dusty legislative wish list into the political maelstrom. Knowing that their more extreme measures had little or no chance of passage – such as Dianne Feinstein’s now stalled “assault weapons” ban – they include seemingly benign and popular measures including “universal” background checks.

As with assault weapons, the public self-educated on the topic, and is now rejecting the plan. And for good reasons.

There are three basic problems with universal background checks; it will have no effect, the numbers don’t prove the case, and the only way to make the scheme remotely effective is repugnant to the people. Those are three big hills to climb. That’s why few politicians seem ready to take the hike.

Most important is that criminals disobey such laws (and according to the Supreme Court in their Haynes vs. U.S. decision, criminals are not legally obligated to). In a report titled “Firearm Use by Offenders”, our own Federal Government noted that nearly 40% of all crime guns are acquired from street level dealers, who are criminals in the black market business of peddling stolen and recycled guns. Standing alone, this shows that “universal” background checks would have an incomplete effect on guns used in crimes.

The story gets worse. The same study notes that just as many crime guns were acquired by acquaintances, be they family or friends (this rather lose category also includes fellow criminals, who are equally unlikely to participate in “universal” background checks). Totaled, nearly 80% of crime guns are already outside of retail distribution channels (which are 14% of crime gun sources) and outside of transactions made by the law abiding folks who would participate in “universal” background checks at gun shows (0.7%).

When 80% of the problem is not addressed by legislation, even if the law was enforced it would be nearly useless.

Click here to read the entire article at CalGunLaws.com.