Word: backgrounders
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...show loophole that allows criminals to buy guns exists because federal law does not require a background check for someone who buys a gun from a private or unlicensed seller at a gun show. Buyers can acquire guns in those transactions without answering questions or showing identification...
Without across-the-board background checks and a database of firearms sales, it is extremely difficult for law enforcement officials to trace the source of guns recovered in crimes. Police have to trace firearms through manufacturers, distributors and individual gun dealers in a difficult, time-consuming process. Even worse, once a retail dealer has sold the gun, it can be re-sold by the owner and any subsequent owner generally without any records being kept, causing a trail of evidence to go cold before the criminal or terrorist can be found...
Under the current Brady law, which has been in effect since 1994, gun buyers must undergo background checks when buying firearms from licensed dealers. According to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, this law has stopped nearly 700,000 criminals and others from purchasing firearms. Imagine how many more criminals and terrorists would be prevented if the background check requirement were extended to all firearms sales...
This legal loophole has to be closed immediately. We cannot allow firearms to be purchased without any background check or other record of purchase. The stakes are too high. While citizens should maintain the right to own guns, no firearms should carelessly be permitted to fall into the hands of terrorists or criminals...
...didn’t want to risk failure. I didn’t want to depend on anyone. I didn’t want people to love only the picture-perfect version of me. I didn’t want my resume or my ethnicity or my religious background to be the sole definition of who I was. So I spent the next several years rebelling by any means necessary. I mastered a type of self-destruction I’d discovered years earlier by starving my body and spirit into a permanent state of emptiness. I spent half...