Opinion: Should firearms background
check system be abolished?
By Dan Wos. Mar 6, 2025
Article Source
To some people, firearm background checks are accepted and considered a way to prevent bad guys from getting guns. They're completely wrong, and here's why.
The background check system, otherwise known as the "government hijacking of a God-given right and selling it back to you as a government-issued privilege," is unconstitutional and dangerous to law-abiding citizens.
As we inch our way toward state-to-state reciprocity with constitutional carry in our major cities, we recognize that many states not only require a government-issued permission slip to carry a gun but also make it almost impossible to obtain that permit. Even if you can make it through the rat maze of training, fees, background checks, storage requirements, magazine capacity limitations, and a list of other constitution-violating requirements, most of society is off limits to you and your firearm because many state gun laws have deemed public and even private places gun-free zones.
The idea of undergoing and passing background checks as a prerequisite to exercising the Second Amendment should have never been a thought even in the darkest corners of the most communist minds of the most radical left-wing ideologues, not only because it violates the rights of American citizens but also because it puts undeserving Americans in legal jeopardy and in physical danger.
According to the Government Accountability Office, in 2017, the NICS background check system denied 112,090 people the right to purchase a firearm. Of those 112,090 denials, only 12,710 were investigated. We have to ask ourselves: If over 112,000 people were denied but only 12,710 investigations took place, wouldn't that be clear evidence that the system is failing and falsely denying good people their right to keep and bear arms?
It gets worse.
That same year, and from that group of 112,090 denials, there were only 12 prosecutions for the crime of attempting to purchase a firearm. Now the anti-gun crowd says, "See, we stopped 12 mass shootings!"
There are problems with that argument.
First of all, do we have no regard for the 112,078 people who were caught up in the poorly run background check system? What happens to those people? The anti-gun crowd couldn't care less about the people who are falsely denied their Second Amendment rights. As well as being falsely labeled a criminal and refused the ability to purchase a gun, good folks who are denied must also jump through hoops, make appeals, and wait. Then they have to wait some more because we know how efficient government agencies operate.
By some estimates, approximately 80% of the NICS denials are never even appealed, often because the person denied is unable to navigate the appeals process or is unable to afford a lawyer to help them. In the meantime, good people are rendered unarmed and helpless by an unconstitutional process that should never have existed in the first place.
What about the 12 prosecutions in 2017? Were they mass murderers? And if they were, why weren't they in jail? The background check system is created under the guise of stopping violent criminals from purchasing firearms, but if a person has done something so heinous that they lose their rights, wouldn't that crime be enough to keep them in jail? And if not, why not? Why are they able to walk among us? It would seem the problem has less to do with guns and more to do with a criminal justice system that works to keep a violent element on our streets. The background check system, however, has been much more effective at preventing law-abiding citizens from possessing firearms than criminals, and we can see that by simply looking at the numbers.
Now you might remember the anti-gun crowd cheering in the media that the number of firearm purchase denials reached the highest number yet in the year 2021. That year, there were approximately 300,000 background check denials. This was great news to the gun grabbers because all they really care about is disarming their political opposition, but did the percentage of false denials change?
With a huge increase in firearm purchases after the left-wing riots of 2020, the FBI claims that its denial rate is 99.8% accurate. Mysteriously, the Government Accountability Office has still not posted its findings for 2022, but you're supposed to believe that the FBI went from a 0.01% success rate to a 99.8% success rate, and you are now safe from false denials.
John Lott from the Crime Prevention Research Center has claimed that the exact opposite is true, and approximately 99% of firearm purchase denials are false positives, meaning good people are being denied their rights for no reason.
After watching the NICS system deny thousands of good people over the years, you're supposed to believe that now, magically, the firearm background check system is functioning as it should. We're not buying it for a minute. We know the system is falsely denying good people their right to own firearms, and the system needs to be abolished.
Our Founding Fathers didn't say, "… the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed … as long as you go through a background check system designed by people who don't want you to have a gun."
Republished with permission from AmmoLand.
