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Editorial voice from elsewhere
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Gun shops are among the few businesses that have thrived amid the COVID-19 public health emergency, all the more so since the Wolf administration classified them as “essential” businesses exempt from state-enforced closure.
According to a state police report issued last week, the agency conducted 314,319 background checks on gun purchasers during April, May and June, up from 217,444 during the same period in 2019, a 45% increase.
The experience demonstrates that the background checks are a valuable safety tool that does not impinge on anyone’s right to own a firearm – legally.
According to the report, 5,801 people were flagged by background checks during the period and precluded from obtaining weapons or concealed carry licenses. Of those cases, 1,238 of the denials were referred to local, state or federal police agencies for further investigation, and 83 people immediately were arrested for attempting to buy one or more weapons while having a criminal warrants pending against them.
Despite that repeated proof that many people who are precluded by law from having weapons attempt to buy them, state lawmakers continue to stonewall reasonable proposals to expand the background check system to venues not now covered by the law, including gun shows, person-to-person transactions and some internet sales. Likewise, the checks should be expanded to include all types of guns.
Definitions in the law should be changed to include so-called “ghost guns,” which do not require background checks because buyers themselves assemble the weapons.
Gun violence in Philadelphia has spiked amid the emergency. Lawmakers should help to thwart it with the expanded background checks, requiring gun owners to report lost or stolen weapons to police and limiting gun sales to one per person per month. Doing so would help reduce “straw purchases” and illegal sales that supply criminals with deadly weapons.
Public safety is in the interest of gun owners as much as anyone else. Lawmakers should expand the safety arsenal.