Background Checks Pros And Cons

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Background checks deems to be very important especially today with criminals having access to guns as much as they do. Back to the Brady Bill passed in 1993, which is not an attempt to disarm the people or take away our rights, just a bill passed to place criminal background checks in order to prevent dangerous people from obtaining weapons. If you go to a firearms retailer to purchase a weapon, the licensed seller enters your name in the NICS system, National Instant Criminal Background Check System. This checks to see if the possible buyer is eligible to purchase a firearm. The NICS searches for any criminal records a person may have, history of mental illnesses, any type of drug abuse or violent behavior. Since this system has been in effect, more then 2.4 million potential buyers have been denied. That is a huge number that may have saved countless lives and is definitely the type of procedures we need in this country to help gun violence decrease. The problem that arises is that the country needs to stop dividing on the debate of banning weapons and start taking the right steps to make sure that guns don’t end up in the hands of the wrong people. Only around sixty percent of gun sales use background checks. That …show more content…

“Americans in gun owning households are much less supportive of new restrictions on firearms than those who don’t have a firearm in the house. Across polls that reported such results, between 40 and 45 percent of respondents in gun-owning households support an assault weapons ban. A bare majority of this group supported a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines in the CBS-NYT poll, but support dropped below half in three other polls. Strong majorities of gun owning household members support requiring background checks for private sales at gun shows, standing at 86 percent in the Post-ABC survey and 85 percent in the Pew poll.” (Clement,