The Associated Press today reported that the number of background checks stemming from the 2013 law that required background checks on all transactions was far lower than expected. According to Ivan Moreno’s report:
Lawmakers drafting the background check requirement, aimed at keeping firearms away from those with a criminal history, relied on information from a non-partisan research arm of the Legislature that predicted about 420,000 new reviews over the first two years. Accordingly, they budgeted about $3 million to the agency that conducts the checks to handle the anticipated surge of work.
But after a year of operating under the new system, Colorado Bureau of Investigations officials have performed only about 13,600 reviews considered a result of the new law – about 7 percent of the estimated first year total.
In order to pass this ill-conceived and largely unenforceable law, Democrats leaned heavily on a statistic that said that 40% of all gun transactions were not subject to a background check, a fact proved false over and over and over again. Here’s the Washington Post take on it:
“In the meantime, we have documented that (a) the survey numbers are about two decades old, so they include purchases that predate any background checks; (b) the survey sample is rather small; and (c) the results are significantly different when adjusted for “purchases” or “sales” — the phrasing used by the president.”
President Obama, perhaps, has been one of the most prolific carriers of this message, saying on March 28, 2103:
“Why wouldn’t we want to close the loophole that allows as many as 40 percent of all gun purchases to take place without a background check?”
The results show that this is clearly not the case, and calls into question all the other information Democrats used to try to scare Coloradans into thinking bills like these were necessary (it didn’t work). Nonetheless, we have a few questions:
- Are all the criminals that were meant to be stopped because of background checks just buying guns under the table?
- Were most of the transactions happening at stores like they are now? So, this law was completely pointless?
- What happened to all the funds directed to paying for the over 400,000 background checks that never happened?
- Did Democrats lie to constituents AGAIN to appease their special interests?
The answer to all of these questions is – Democrats once against foisted government control on Coloradans, only to accomplish absolutely nothing.