Smart Bombs: Smart to deter gun crimes

Inevitably in a gun debate, someone will point out that a particular regulation will only inconvenience law-abiding citizens. Criminals, they note, will go unscathed.

But does that mean we should rescind theft and murder statutes, because only the virtuous will respect them? Of course not. They’re in place to punish offenders and to deter crime. Background checks on gun purchases, such as those called for in Initiative 594, can do the same.

Perhaps this wouldn’t be so difficult to understand if we weren’t saturated with TV shows and movies featuring criminal masterminds. After all, who in their right mind would undergo a background check when they know they’re ineligible to buy a gun?

The answers in the real world aren’t that complicated. Committing a crime isn’t the most intelligent choice to begin with. Spend a day in a courtroom and listen to the stories. We’re not talking “Jeopardy!” contestants here.

The Spokane County District Court security staff collects data that happens to illustrate the point. For obvious reasons, weapons aren’t allowed in the courthouse, and those entering must pass through detectors. Some visitors heed the warning signs and place their weapons in lockers, but many try to carry them in. From July through September, security screenings yielded: five handguns, 12 Tasers, 270 razor blades, 393 canisters of Mace, 777 “dangerous tools” and 1,639 knives. Security even confiscated 68 drug pipes or similar paraphernalia.

So, people do make bad choices, and continue to do so while trying to sort out previous ones. When you consider the actions of the dumb, the desperate and the drug-addled, and the fact that many people suffer from mental illnesses that impair their judgment, it’s easy to see that a background check law can thwart unwanted sales.

In fact, we already know this with the checks that occur at licensed gun shops. More than 2.1 million illegal sales have been stopped since the federal law was adopted 20 years ago, according to the Brady Campaign to End Handgun Violence. Now, it’s fair to point out that these people have escaped arrest, but that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of sales were deterred.

Background checks are like speed limits. We know most speeders aren’t pulled over, but it’s still smart to make it illegal on all roads.

Feverish. Normally it would be odd to have an Ebola czar but no surgeon general. But these are strange days, where irrational fear goes viral in an instant.

The surgeon general is the nation’s public health director. The job has been vacant since July because U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky, has put a hold on the nomination of Dr. Vivek Murthy. The powerful National Rifle Association has informed senators they will hold a pro-Murthy vote against them.

Murthy’s “sin” is that he considers gun violence to be a public health issue, which puts him in league with “gun grabbers,” such as the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics. He also advocates the collection of data on the subject. At present, the government doesn’t know how many people are the victims of nonfatal gunshot wounds, so it can’t say whether gun violence is trending up or down. But the pursuit of such knowledge has been branded a slippery slope to gun confiscation.

Meanwhile, Republican senators such as U.S. Sen. John McCain have prodded the president to name an Ebola czar. McCain once complained that Obama has “more czars than the Romanovs.”

Gun violence (including suicides) kills about 30,000 Americans annually, and the Senate quarantines a concerned surgeon general nominee. Ebola kills one in America, and critics flip-flop on czars and complain that Obama’s choice doesn’t have a medical background.

If only there were an available doctor who does.