There is already an extraordinarily large number of guns owned by private citizens in the United States -- about one gun for every citizen (man, woman, or child). That's more than 300 million privately-owned guns, and that figure continues to rise. Probably because the NRA (shilling for the gun manufacturers) has been able to use the election of President Obama to scare people into increasing gun buying in this country. Even the massacre of twenty 6-7 year-olds and six teachers in Connecticut in December 2012 didn't slow gun sales. In fact, sales increased greatly that next month due to fears that some reasonable gun laws might be passed.Of course, no new laws regarding guns were passed on the federal level -- not even an extension of background checks to prevent convicted criminals and the dangerously mentally ill from buying guns. American politicians seem content to let more than 30,000 people die each year because of the proliferation of guns (combining murders, suicides, and accidents).
But there is a small bit of good news. It looks like gun sales may be slowing in the United States. While we don't have figures for actual gun sales, a pretty good guide to how many guns are being sold can be seen from looking at the number of background checks done by the FBI for gun dealers. And the number of background checks has dropped significantly in the last year -- from 2,495,440 in January of 2013 to about 1,660,355 in January of 2014 (a drop of 835,085, or about 33.5%).
That is good news, but we must remember that only about 60% of the gun sales in the United States are done through dealers who must perform a background check before selling a gun. The other 40% of gun sales (at gun shows, on internet, or by private individuals) are done without any background check at all -- which means any criminal or dangerous individual can easily purchase a gun, and do it legally.
Personally, I don't understand why we allow the sale of a single gun without the seller performing a background check on the buyer (regardless of who the seller is or how the sale is being made). It would not only save many lives each year, but would not impinge of the right of law-abiding citizens to own a firearm. It is simply inexcusable that our federal politicians can't pass a comprehensive background check law (which has already been deemed constitutional by the Supreme Court, and not a violation of the Second Amendment) -- especially since this is supported by a huge majority of the American people.
