Background Checks: Do or Die!

I read a shocking story on the front page of The Chicago Tribune yesterday, about a couple of young men--one a seemingly respectable college student--who ran guns to the gangs in Chicago.  Or anyone, really--they got caught selling a couple dozen of them to a Federal informant.

All they had to do was go across the border into northwest Indiana and go to the gun shows.  The "licensed gun dealers" there are required to do background checks, but there is no waiting period, and the checks can easily be avoided through access to "private sales" also present at the gun shows.

Here is the answer to those gun apologists who would suggest that, because Chicago has strict gun laws but a high homicide rate, those gun laws don't work.  The answer is that they would work, except our borders between communities and states are open!  This is the clearest evidence possible that Federally-mandated standards on all gun sales are required--the "background checks" that are part of the legislation that President Obama has proposed.

It doesn't look too promising for the banning of sale and manufacture of semi-automatic rifles, or even for the smaller "magazine" for such guns--so we would still be under the threat of those uncertified lunatics who prefer such killing machines for their convenience and capacity to produce mass slaughter.  However, far more people are being killed through the access criminals and would-be criminals get for underground weapons of all kinds.

Those who vote against this provision, or if somehow they can block a vote, deserve the fate that results nowadays to too many of us--to be shot by gunmen bearing unlicensed arms (of which I am not one).  I wish them only their just rewards.