Background Checks Crowning Principle of New Gun Control Push

Out of the several proposals suggested by the Obama administration last week as a response to what seems like an epidemic of insanely baseless massacres in the US in recent years, the one that seems to be getting the biggest push is universal background checks before someone can become a gun owner.

Last Friday Vice President Joe Biden began the administration’s campaign to garner wide spread support for the new gun restrictions, explaining that the main emphasis was going to be on across-the-board background investigation of potential gun owners.

According to polls conducted last week, out of a wide array of measures to prevent such horrific tragedies as the massacre in Newtown, Connecticut at the Sandy Hook elementary school last December, the one measure with the widest support is universal background checks. Using the results of the polls Obama and Biden will begin reassuring Americans who are wary of gun control laws that weapons bans will not be the leading method of prevention of gun violence.

“There should be universal background checks, universal background checks,” Biden said. “It in no way impacts upon someone’s ability under the Constitution to own a gun. Zero, zero. It’s enforcing a law – some folks say, ‘Look, just enforce the laws that are on the books.’ Well, the first step to do that is put a law on the books that says all those folks that have adjudicated incapable of owning a gun under the law, make sure we have access to their names. That’s why there is a need for universal background checks.”