Controversial Topic: Gun Control

Today, legal gun ownership is widespread in the United States. According to a Briefing Paper from the Small Arms Survey, American civilians own roughly 393 million firearms, with gun ownership penetrating between 35% and 42% of homes. With roughly 120.5 firearms for every 100 residents, the U.S. has the world’s highest rate of gun ownership per capita.

The United States is also home to widespread gun violence. Rates of gun violence vary from year to year. According to the Pew Research Center, “Taking overall population changes into account, there were 12 firearm-related deaths for every 100,000 people in 2017, a 14% increase from five years earlier. Despite the recent increase, however, the rate of gun-related deaths was considerably higher during the early and mid-1990s: In 1993, for example, there were 15.6 gun deaths per 100,000 people.”

In any given year, guns claim tens of thousands of American lives in the form of mass shootings, suicides, police shootings, domestic violence, urban crime, and more. While many Americans recognize that gun violence is a problem, there is heated disagreement over how to confront this issue.

• On one side of this controversial topic, gun control advocates argue that more regulatory oversight is needed in areas such as universal background checks, restrictions for those with mental illness, limitations on the types of firearms and ammunition that can be sold, and other measures that they believe might stem the tide of gun violence. This position is more likely to be held and advocated for by individuals who lean to the left of the political spectrum, including Democratic and progressive independent voters and their elected leaders.
• On the other side of this debate topic, gun rights advocates argue that the Second Amendment provides expansive liberties surrounding gun ownership and that many of the limitations called for by gun control advocates would constitute an infringement on those rights. Some gun rights advocates also argue that stricter regulations would not be an effective measure in reducing the occurrence of gun violence. This position is more likely to be held and advocated for by individuals who lean to the right of the political spectrum, including Republican and Conservative Independent voters and their elected leaders.

Many Americans also hold more moderate views, striking a balance between belief in the Constitutional right to bear arms and belief in the need for sensible gun laws. However, the gun debate engenders strong emotions both because so many Americans have been the victims of or have lost loved ones to gun violence and because gun rights advocates view gun ownership as a foundational American civil liberty.

A Brief History of the Issue

It’s no accident that the right to bear arms was built so prominently into the Constitution. Frontier-life in Colonial America necessitated the ownership and ability to use firearms. The dangers of wildlife and violent clashes with indigenous tribes made guns a critical survival tool in the pre-Revolutionary territories. Moreover, in the absence of a central army, colonial militias were a required line of defense. Every man was not only required to be part of their local militia, but was required to be in possession of a firearm and ammunition. To this extent, gun ownership was then, and for many is still seen today, as a feature rooted in the cultural fabric of the United States.

The Revolutionary Era and The Second Amendment (1775-1791):

Several major confrontations which precipitated the War for American Independence centered on British attempts to disarm the colonists. In response to colonial resistance over taxation, the British imposed an embargo on gunpowder. Their goal was to limit the ability of colonists to defend against British encroachment into local affairs.

This was followed by several major confrontations over British attempts at seizure. In April of 1775, British forces attempted to confiscate the cannon belonging to the Concord and Lexington Militias. This led directly to the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19th. The next day, in a separate incident, British forces attempted to confiscate gunpowder stores held in the Williamsburg, Virginia armory. The resulting “Gunpowder Incident” saw a militia led by Patrick Henry face off with Lord Dunmore, Royal Governor of Virginia.

These early events on the path to war would figure heavily into the psyche of the Founding Fathers who, 15 years hence, would keep the right to bear arms foremost in their minds when writing the Bill of Rights. The phrasing used in the resulting Second Amendment underscores the important role played by colonial militias prior to the establishment of a traditional military.

As authorized in 1791, the Second Amendment states that “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

While informal militia groups do remain active in various states today, these are neither regulated nor organized in any central way. Thus, the more consequential aspect of the Second Amendment concerns the presumed right (one which has been frequently debated in court) of civilians to bear arms as a means of protecting both individual and collective liberties.

Bliss v. Commonwealth (1822)

The state of Kentucky was the first on record to impose some measure of “gun control” in the early part of the 19th Century. The measure in question actually had nothing to do specifically with guns, and instead concerned the right to carry a concealed sword in a cane. The measure was passed in 1813, and was intended to “curb the practice of carrying concealed weapons.”

The regulation prompted fierce disagreement in the Kentucky State Congress, and ultimately led to a legal confrontation over the meaning of the right to bear arms. While the language of the Second Amendment largely emphasized the practical role of militias, this case over the right to carry concealed arms was the first to address the question of the “individual right” to bear arms.

In the case of Bliss v. Commonwealth, Kentucky’s concealed weapons ban was challenged on the basis that both the state’s Constitution and Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protected the individual liberty to bear arms. The challenge was effective. The Kentucky court found that the right to bear arms “is not only a part of the right that is secured by the constitution; it is the right entire and complete, as it existed at the adoption of the constitution; and if any portion of that right be impaired, immaterial how small the part may be, and immaterial the order of time at which it be done, it is equally forbidden by the constitution.”

This would prove a far-reaching precedent. While Kentucky would, in 1850, ratify an amendment to the state constitution outlawing concealed weapons, the court’s discussion helped to set in motion the legal debate which persists today. Bliss v. Commonwealth offered an encompassing interpretation of the right to bear arms which proposed that any restrictions around this right would be inherently unconstitutional. Certainly, this position has been, and continues to be challenged in both legislative efforts and court decisions. However, the court’s recognition of an expansive individual right to bear arms would provide gun rights advocates with the basis for a great many of the legal arguments mounted since.

State v. Buzzard (1842)

To the extent that the decision in Bliss v. Commonwealth provided a legal framework for gun rights advocates, so would the decision in State. v. Buzzard provide a precedent for advocates of gun control. As with Kentucky, this Arkansas case initiated over a state law prohibiting concealed carry.

In this case, a man charged with the crime of carrying a concealed weapon claimed that the existing statute violated his right to bear arms. Agreeing with his claim, an Arkansas Trial Court struck down the law. The state appealed the finding to the Arkansas State Supreme Court, which overturned the lower court’s finding, concluding that “the words ‘a well-regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free State’, and the words ‘common defense’ clearly show the true intent and meaning of these Constitutions [i.e., Arkansas and the U.S.] and prove that it is a political and not an individual right, and, of course, that the State, in her legislative capacity, has the right to regulate and control it: This being the case, then the people, neither individually nor collectively, have the right to keep and bear arms.”

Known as the Arkansas Doctrine, this finding refutes the earlier Kentucky court’s finding, and instead emphasizes the primacy of militias in the intended meaning of the right to bear arms. This position concludes that regulations around individual rights are within the purview of the state and do not violate the conditions of preserving a “well-regulated militia.”

As with the conclusion of Bliss v. Commonwealth, this doctrine has been challenged many times in court with varying outcomes. However, it remains a foundational legal precedent for arguments in favor of gun control.

The Fourteenth Amendment (1868)

The end of the Civil War brought about the Reconstruction Era in which the federal government took steps to integrate former slaves and freedmen into American life. The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 availed “equal protection of the laws” to all natural born and naturalized citizens of the United States including all freed former slaves.

Upon its drafting, the phrase “privileges and immunities of citizens” was included in the Fourteenth Amendment as a means of including the first Eight Amendments of the Bill of Rights among those equal protections. This move prompted particularly heated Congressional debate as Southern states undertook their own internal efforts to suppress the rights of freed slaves. Reconstruction leaders feared that Southern states intended to deprive former slaves of their right to bear arms as a measure of continuing to suppress them.

This concern would prove well-founded. Southern resistance to Reconstruction ultimately brought this period to an unceremonious end by 1876, and with it, brought an end to efforts aimed at extending Constitutional protections to freed slaves.

For some insight into how that year’s presidential election helped to bring about the end of Reconstruction, check out our look at the controversy over America’s Electoral College.

The United States v. Cruikshank (1876)

A major court case would play a significant role in ending the Reconstruction Era and setting the South on a path toward Jim Crow and segregation. In the case of United States v. Cruikshank, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the “privileges or immunities clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment was meant only to apply in restricting federal government powers, and that the rule was not meant to limit the powers of state governments. The Second Amendment proved a central point of dispute, with the Supreme Court ultimately finding that this protection “has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government.”

Beyond simply giving Southern states the authority to restrict the right to bear arms for freed slaves, the decision gave the former states of the Confederacy expansive authority to restrict the freedoms of Black Southerners writ large. The consequence was a century of legally sanctioned deprivation of federal Constitutional rights for Black Americans.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is Formed (1871)

Another noteworthy event that coincided with the Civil War and Reconstruction Eras was the emergence in the 1860s of a national marksmanship club. Chartered as the National Rifle Association (NRA) in New York in 1871, its original impetus was to improve training among Union soldiers. Indeed, its first president was Union General Ambrose Burnside; it’s eighth president was former Union General and U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.

For the first several decades of its existence, the NRA was focused entirely on improved marksmanship as well as the establishment of sport and hunting clubs for engagement in domestic and international competition. In the latter 19th and early 20th Centuries, the NRA was not focused on policy issues. In fact, while the NRA is largely associated today with advocacy for gun rights, its earliest ventures into the political fray saw it lending its support to the first federal gun control regulations.

National Firearms Act (1934)

Indeed, the National Rifle Association (NRA) did actively endorse the nation’s first federal gun control law. During the era of Prohibition, gangland activity proliferated widely throughout the United States, especially in major urban centers like New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. As the underworld grew around the control and sales of bootleg alcohol, so too did the occurrence of violent turf wars.

These turf wars reached a fever pitch in the late 1920s, peaking in visibility with the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre. Chicago had become the site of a fierce conflict between the Irish North Side gangs and the Italian South Side gangs, the latter helmed by the notorious Al Capone. While the actual perpetrators were never apprehended, it is widely believed that Capone, in collaboration with the Chicago Police Department, conspired to execute seven North Side gang members on February 14th, 1929.

The bloody episode brought about the call for more responsive federal oversight of firearms, especially the Thompson submachine gun (Tommy gun) and sawed-off shotgun, which had both become preferred tools of the trade for the era’s gangsters. The call for some measure of federal legislation reached its peak with the 1933 assassination attempt on President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The following year, Congress adopted the National Firearms Act, which called both for the registration of firearms and what was at the time a fairly prohibitive $200 tax on the purchase of firearms. At the time of its passage, the law defined firearms largely as machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, and concealed weapons but stopped short of regulating pistols and revolvers.

United States v. Miller (1939)

1939 saw the first major legal challenge to the National Firearms Act and, in the decision produced by the U.S. Supreme Court, provided precedent for advocates on both sides of the debate.

The case involved two men with known gangland affiliation who were apprehended for transporting a sawed-off shotgun across state lines for the purposes of commerce without registering the weapon in accordance with the NFA. One defendant, Jack Miller, argued before a U.S. District Court that the NFA was a violation of his 2nd Amendment rights.

The District Court upheld the claim, deeming the apprehension unconstitutional. However, context is important in this case. It is said that Justice McReynolds, who wrote the majority opinion, was actually in favor of the gun control law. However, Miller was known to be targeted by his mob associates for testifying to authorities about their activities. Deducing that Miller would ultimately go into hiding after the case, and thus be unable to appear in the Supreme Court to argue his defense, the judge viewed this as the best way to pass the case up to the higher court for the establishment of a gun control precedent.

He deduced correctly. Miller was found murdered in April. The Supreme Court heard the case in May and, in the absence of defense representation, concluded “that possession or use of a ‘shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length’ at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument. Certainly it is not within judicial notice that this weapon is any part of the ordinary military equipment, or that its use could contribute to the common defense.”

The interpretations yielded in the long aftermath of this decision are mixed, with gun control advocates viewing this as a precedent establishing the right of the federal government to impose limitations on gun ownership rights without being said to violate the conditions of the Second Amendment. By contrast, gun rights advocates view the language of the opinion as evidence that the courts accept the concept of individual rights as being implied by the maintenance of a well-regulated militia, and that the ruling was only decided thusly because presiding judges lacked knowledge that sawed-off shotguns were actually employed by the military at the time. To this end, gun rights advocates view the finding as support for individual gun rights (as opposed to supporting rights only for militias).

Gun Control Act of 1968 (1960s)

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy was killed by an assassin’s bullet. The event signaled the beginning of a shift in the public’s attitude toward gun ownership. This moment began a multi-year effort to create more restrictive federal laws around interstate gun commerce. It was claimed that alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had purchased the weapon used to murder Kennedy through an interstate magazine mail order.

Scrutiny of the event led to a proposal that would prohibit interstate firearms transfers unless between manufacturers, dealers, and licensed importers. Debate over the conditions of the law persisted for several years. But in 1968, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy in close succession further moved public opinion in favor of gun control regulation.

During Congressional hearings, the Executive Vice-President of the NRA, Franklin Orth threw his support behind the regulation, arguing that “we do not think that any sane American, who calls himself an American, can object to placing into this bill the instrument which killed the president of the United States.”

The Gun Control Act (GCA) was passed in 1968, placing restrictions on interstate trade of firearms, restricting interstate gun sales by mail, and establishing categories of individuals who could be restricted from making gun purchases, including convicted felons. The Act would also largely absorb and expand on the conditions of the National Firearms Act as well as establishing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as an American law enforcement agency.

This would also be the beginning of a sea change for gun rights advocates. The new federal regulations would place the gun rights community in an increasingly defensive posture. And as the next several years wore on, this shifting attitude would seep into the NRA as well.

Firearm Owners Protection Act (1986)

In the decade immediately following passage of the Gun Control Act, the NRA underwent a fundamental shift in orientation. Previously a non-partisan group, the 1970s saw the NRA increasingly solidifying its connection to the Republican Party. By the mid-1970s, the NRA had become an explicitly political organization with a focus on lobbying and building coalitions with conservative office-holders.

Its primary imperatives were to see the GCA overturned and to weaken the power of the ATF. While they were unable to fully overturn the GCA, the NRA achieved a growing level of effectiveness during the Republican-dominated Reagan Era. In 1982, a Republican-led Senate subcommittee built to study the Second Amendment concluded that “the history, concept, and wording of the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States, as well as its interpretation by every major commentator and court in the first half-century after its ratification, indicates that what is protected is an individual right of a private citizen to own and carry firearms in a peaceful manner.”

The same subcommittee also argued that 75% of enforcement actions by the ATF were aimed at harassing ordinary and law-abiding citizens. These findings served as an imperative to create and pass the Firearm Owners Protection Act (1986). The legislation effectively blunted the sweeping impact of the GCA and undercut the authority of the ATF. The bill did add a ban on civilian ownership of machine guns manufactured after the date of its passage, but otherwise rolled back laws which previously restricted interstate sales of firearms, prohibited the shipment of ammunition by U.S. mail, and required registration of ammunition. The new standards also added federal protection for transporting firearms through states where such weapons would otherwise be illegal.

The NRA celebrated the legislation as a victory while it was broadly opposed by law enforcement groups.

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Action (1993)

The next several years would see a growing political polarization around the issue of gun rights vs. gun control. The NRA’s affiliation with the Republican Party was almost total by this juncture, as its legal and lobbying interests connected closely with the conservative agenda. In turn, the Republican Party became increasingly focused on protecting expansive Second Amendment rights.

The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was originally introduced to Congress in 1987. Named for James Brady, a White House Press Secretary wounded and permanently disabled by a would-be assassin’s bullet intended for then-President Reagan, the Brady Act called for background checks on prospective gun buyers as well as the establishment of a five-day waiting period on all gun purchases.

The NRA strongly opposed the bill, and worked to derail its passage through its affiliation with the Republican Party. The lobby group succeeded to the extent that the Bill could only be effectively passed during the very brief window of time where Democrats possessed control over both the White House and Congress. With Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the Brady Act picked up enough momentum to pass through Congress.

However, even this effort required compromise. One major concession to the NRA was a 1998 sunset on the five-day waiting period. That condition was never renewed, which means the five-day waiting period requirement ceased to exist in 1998.

The brief period of momentum for gun control also contributed to the passage of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994. A subsection of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, the Ban applied to the manufacturing of certain specified semi-automatic firearms for civilian use as well as large capacity ammunition magazines. The ban was passed with a narrow majority in the Senate and included a 2004 sunset.

Court cases raised against various conditions of the ban failed to gain traction. So too did Congressional efforts to renew the ban. Thus, it reached its sunset in 2004. All efforts at reestablishing a ban on federal assault weapons have failed since that time.

*It’s also worth noting that the 1990s saw major growth in the modern militia movement. Two major incidences involving violent confrontation between fringe citizen groups and federal law enforcement-Ruby Ridge (1992) and Waco (1993)-sparked growing fear of domestic government overreach. As a consequence, this period of time saw the emergence of numerous homegrown and heavily armed domestic militias. For more on these incidences, and the modern militia movement, check out our take on the Extremism Crontroversy.

CDC Restriction (1996)

During the 1990s, the NRA grew in presence and power, rising to visibility as one of Washington’s most powerful lobby groups. Its power was particularly apparent in 1996, when conservative members of Congress successfully inserted into that year’s appropriations bill that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.”

The condition was established, according to its supporters, to ensure that the CDC did not fund politically-motivated research aimed at justifying additional gun control legislation.

Columbine Shooting (1999) and the Continued Rise of Mass Shooting in the U.S.

Gun violence largely trended downward through the 1990s. However, the end of the decade would see the emergence of a new pattern, with mass casualty events growing in visibility and frequency. The Columbine High School massacre would prove a dark landmark. The shooting on April 20th, 1999 saw two heavily armed students rampage through their Littleton, Colorado high school, murdering 12 students and one teacher before taking their own lives.

The nation was collectively shocked by the young age of the perpetrators and victims. However, in the two decades that have followed, Columbine stands less as an aberration and more as a template for countless future school shootings. Prominent among them are Virginia Tech (2007), Sandy Hook (2012), Marjorie Stoneman Douglass (2018), and countless others.

While the pattern of mass casualty events gained greater visibility in the context of school shootings, a spate of high profile mass shootings have highlighted the permeation of this danger in nearly every context of public life including Fort Hood (2009), the Century 16 movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado (2012), the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston (2015), Orlando’s Pulse nightclub (2016), the Las Vegas Route 91 Harvest music festival (2017), the Sutherland Springs church (2017), Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue (2018), an El Paso Walmart (2019), a King Soopers supermarket in Boulder, Colorado (2021), a FedEx facility in Indianapolis (2021) and countless others.

District of Columbia v. Heller (2008)

Remarkably, though debate has persisted for two centuries over the exact implications of the Second Amendment, it wasn’t until the 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller that a lasting precedent was established. The landmark Supreme Court decision struck down a handgun ban in the District of Columbia as well as a rule that would require rifle and shotgun owners to keep their weapons unloaded and disassembled, or else secured using a trigger lock.

The court’s decision held that such regulations were in violation of the Second Amendment, and indicated that while the government does have a right to place regulatory controls over gun ownership, the individual right to bear arms is essentially unlimited. Such is to say that, for the first time, the courts established a precedent stating that gun rights are not strictly reserved for state militias, and that the conditions of the Amendment are intended to extend to individual owners for the purposes of self defense.

Top Ten Historical Influencers in the Gun Control Debate

Using our own backstage Ranking Analytics tools, we’ve compiled a list of the most influential figures concerning the issue of gun control in the U.S. between 1900 and 2020. Our Rankings produced a list of influencers with particular clout in the world of conservative politics, including those who have held leadership positions in the NRA, who have served on the judiciary, or who have established visible media personae among conservative supporters. Also included are a number of researchers and political figures who have been instrumental in supporting or creating gun control legislation.

Most Influential Books About Gun Control

Using our own backstage Ranking Analytics tools, we’ve compiled a list of the most influential books on the topic of “gun violence” in the U.S. between 1900 and 2020. This list is dominated by popular non-fiction aimed at advocating for gun rights but also includes a few texts by researchers and journalists which advocate for sensible gun control laws.

The Current Controversy

According to Business Insider, 2020 marked the highest total of gun-related deaths in the U.S. in more than two decades. Gun violence claimed 19,379 lives even as a pandemic disrupted so many other aspects of American life. Suicide by gun claimed an additional 24,090 lives in 2020.

Moreover, in recent years, the United States has faced what some would term an epidemic of mass shootings-which are defined as incidents in which a shooter claims the lives of at least four victims. According to this definition, nearly one-third of the world’s public mass shootings between 1966 and 2012 occurred in the United States.

The Gun Violence Archive uses a more expansive definition for mass shooting, identifying such incidences as those where at least four people are shot, including both fatalities and survivors. According to this definition, 2020 saw 611 mass shooting incidents, up from 417 in 2019.

Each of these mass shootings typically provokes a renewed debate in public and in Congress over the role of the federal government in restricting gun ownership. In spite of their visibility, mass shootings account for only a small fraction of the gun-related deaths in the United States. As the numbers above demonstrate, the vast majority of gun-related deaths are suicides, with urban crime, gang activity, domestic violence, police shootings, and accidental deaths making up the majority of non-self-inflicted, gun-related casualties.

Citing these patterns of violence, advocates for stronger gun control measures call for policies such as a universal background check for all gun sales, including those made at gun shows, restrictions for gun buyers with mental illness, and bans on the sale of certain large-capacity magazines and assault weapons, among other conditions. Gun rights advocates remain steadfastly opposed to many of these restrictions, though there is some bipartisan agreement on the use of background checks.

According to a Gallup poll from 2020, roughly 55% of surveyed Americans believe gun laws should be stricter; 35% believe gun laws should be kept as they are now; and 10% believe gun laws should be less strict. Views remain sharply partisan, with far more left-leading independents and Democrats favoring stricter gun control legislation and far more right-leaning independents and Republicans opposing stricter gun control legislation. Lobby groups on both sides also play a major role in fueling this political divide, though it bears noting that the NRA filed for bankruptcy in January 2021 as a consequence of fraud within its own senior leadership. Its ability to remain a dominant entity in gun politics is somewhat in question today.

There has been some movement toward stricter gun measures at the state level, including assault weapons bans in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. However, efforts at responding either to mass shooter events or broader gun violence with federal legislation have all fallen short.

Gun Control: “Loopholes” That Allow Gun Sales

Since gun laws and restrictions differ from state to state, the efforts of lawmakers and law enforcers in states with stricter gun laws are often just not enough to prevent illegal or underground firearm exchange activities. This enables traffickers to move firearms between permissive and restrictive states.

Additionally, as effective as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, there are still various loopholes. And because of the loopholes, many guns end up on the wrong people.

Online Gun Sales

With technology, everything can be seen and bought from the internet, including guns. Items for sale online are usually unregulated and unsupervised. In fact, Armslist has over 100,000 ads just this year, and it’s almost impossible to determine how many ads there were for different guns and assault rifles. The figure is still in the tens of thousands, given that more than 20,000 ads are uploaded each week.

This significant loophole—which is a common subject of heated debates and discussions—must be properly and immediately addressed to improve gun control and reduce illegal firearm ownership.

The “Gun Show Loophole”

The “gun show loophole” is another famous and practiced loophole for buying and selling firearms. Gun shows are open gatherings where licensed and unlicensed merchants sell firearms at public locations. However, this is called a “private sale” for some people.

This loophole entails that no buyer’s background check is carried out since people can participate in buying and selling without the presence of a Federal Firearms Licensee or a gun dealer. Furthermore, transactions are often not recorded by the government.

This loophole makes it more likely that those who would not ordinarily pass a background check may obtain firearms.

The “Boyfriend Loophole”

Federal law only classifies people as domestic abusers who are forbidden from purchasing a handgun if they were previously married to, have children with, or are the parents or legal guardians of a victim. This is known as the “boyfriend loophole.” Unmarried partners and stalkers, however, are not regarded as prohibited individuals by the law. However, if a gun is present during a domestic violence situation, there is a 500% increase in the risk of homicide.

The “boyfriend loophole” has detrimental effects. In 2020, women made up approximately 37% of all murder victims among intimate partners, which includes gay and divorced couples. 34% of those were wives. In contrast, 7% of the victims were husbands, and 13% of the victims were boyfriends.

The “Charleston Loophole”

According to federal law, a gun transaction may proceed automatically if a background check has not been finished after three business days. 90% of federal background checks are finished in about a minute, but those that take more than three business days have a four times higher chance of being rejected.

Despite the lack of a definitive determination that the buyer is qualified to purchase a handgun, the gun seller may choose to move forward with the sale if the FBI has not wrapped up its investigation after three days. These transactions are “default proceed” sales or the “Charleston loophole.”

This loophole was used to buy a firearm by the gunman who committed a horrifying hate crime at the Emanuel AME Church in Southern Carolina in 2015. Due to his criminal history, the shooter was not permitted to purchase a firearm, but the background check wasn’t completed because of an issue with his NICS data. Two months later, the gunman used it to kill nine attendees attending Bible study at the historic African American church. The dealer then sold the weapon through a default proceed transaction.

Hate Crime Loophole

The “hate crime loophole” is the most controversial. While hate crimes are rising, doubling the rate in two years, only seven states currently forbid someone convicted of a hate crime misdemeanor from possessing a firearm. Many people will drop additional charges to a hate crime misdemeanor to keep their gun ownership privileges.