LEE'S SUMMIT, Mo. — Gun laws and a proposed background-check law, halfway through Congress, are once again in the national spotlight after 10 people were fatally shot at a Boulder, Colorado, supermarket on March 22.
A 2019 sampling of FBI background check data showed that 30% of firearm background checks were not “instant determinations.”
Most background checks can be completed in a matter of minutes, but if it takes longer than three days – as it stands now – the law allows the dealer discretion on whether or not to proceed with a firearm sale.
Chelsea Parsons, vice president of Gun Violence Prevention Policy at Center for American Progress, said that at that point, it's the FBI's responsibility to continue the investigation.
“If they later determined that person in fact should not have been allowed to buy a gun, then it’s on the ATF to go out and knock on the door and try and get that gun back from the person to whom it should not have been sold in the first place," Parsons said. "Essentially [a] dangerous situation for law enforcement."
What Parsons referenced is known as the Charleston Loophole, which allowed the shooter in the 2015 mass shooting at a Charleston, South Carolina, church to be able to buy his firearm.
“We need to start doing something, and we can’t just not act because a particular bill that we’re trying to move forward wouldn’t have addressed the most recent horrific mass shooting that’s in the headlines,” Parsons said.
Mike Brown, CEO of Frontier Justice, a firearms retailer in Lee’s Summit, said he's not sure how to "legislate stopping bad people from doing bad things."
“Frontier Justice's policy is we do transfer the firearm after three-days if we have not heard from the FBI,” Brown said. “We will sell probably 10 to 15,000 guns a year and out of those we may get three that come back a year that would’ve been denied.”
The House of Representatives recently passed a bill aimed at closing the Charleston Loophole and a bill to expand background checks on all commercial gun sales. Gun-control advocates said these laws wouldn't solve all forms of gun violence in the area, but they will make it harder for someone who’s not supposed to have a gun to gain access to one.
“Think about how many lives that equates to and how many families and then how many communities,” Parsons said, referencing the number of lives impacted by gun violence every day.
In Kansas City, Missouri, alone, police responded to seven shootings last weekend that were either fatal or life-threatening.
Brown disagreed, saying it’s a heart issue, not a tool issue.
“I think if we’re going to do anything, we need to focus on mental health issues... talk about family issues and what’s causing someone to decide to wake up someday and decide to enact violence upon their fellow man,” he said.
That is where the opposing sides come together – combating gun violence, in part, by treating it as a public health issue rooted in public health methodology.
