Stranger Than Fiction: Gun Control Debate Leads to Discovery of New Species

Researchers have found a variety of new species on the planet in recent years. Bugs and slugs, bats and rats, mini-dragons with tails, fish that walk, pigs that live in the sea, monkeys that sneeze, translucent frogs and, well, the list of previously unknown critters goes on and on.

We think we’ve found another. This will have to be validated according to scientific protocols before we can be certain, but we think we have found . . . an honest anti-gunner.

On Tuesday, the New York Times published an opinion by Abner Mikva, previously a federal judge placed on the bench by anti-gun president Jimmy Carter, White House counsel to anti-gun president Bill Clinton, admirer of anti-gun president Barack Obama, and mentor-of-sorts to Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, who previously advised Clinton on gun control issues.

Like other gun control supporters, Mikva advocates requiring background checks on private sales of firearms. Following their usual script, he says, “[t]he Brady Bill’s background-check requirement applies only to sales by licensed firearms dealers. Virtually all resales of guns by private individuals are left unregulated.” Though the nation’s murder rate fell to an all-time low in 2014, Mikva insists, “The consequences of this gap are dire.”

However, unlike other anti-gunners, Mikva also makes clear where gun control supporters hope their background check expansion efforts will lead. “A more effective system would require everyone who owns or acquires a gun to register it,” he says. “Gun owners would also need a license that could be obtained by demonstrating they can use a gun responsibly, and passing a background check. Registration records would create a comprehensive database of all guns and their owners. . . . Registration could include recording the unique characteristics of a firearm’s barrel [and] stamping ammunition with identifiers.”

As we have elsewhere noted, in addition to demanding background checks on private sales of firearms, gun control supporters have introduced legislation to allow the FBI to indefinitely retain records on people who pass firearm background checks. If they completed those two goals, all that would remain to achieve the gun registration system they have long desired would be to require each background check record to include the make, model and serial number of every gun acquired as a result of the check. 

It’s no coincidence that gun control supporters’ priority, which used to be getting handguns registered as a precursor to getting them banned and confiscated, is now getting all firearms sales subjected to a background check and having the FBI retain records of such checks indefinitely. Just as birds chirp, squirrels bury nuts, and dogs bark, gun control supporters are always trying to set the stage for banning guns.