President Joe Biden is taking action on Thursday that will close the “gun show loophole” by requiring tens of thousands of unlicensed gun dealers to perform background checks. It is an effort to reduce gun violence and mass shootings that lawmakers have attempted for a quarter-century, since the 1999 Columbine, Colorado High School massacre, the deadliest school mass shooting in U.S. history at the time. Next week marks the 25th anniversary of the Columbine massacre, where 12 students and one teacher were murdered.
Last August the Biden administration announced the new proposed rule to add an estimated 23,000 unlicensed gun sellers to the category that already includes approximately 80,000 dealers required to perform background checks, according to CBS News. Politico calls it “the most sweeping expansion of firearms background checks in decades.” A bipartisan bill passed after the Uvalde, Texas elementary school mass shooting that left 21 people dead, including 19 children and two adults, made the rule change possible, Forbes reported last year.
The rule will become effective in 30 days.
In February, speaking at an NRA-sponsored event in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump vowed if elected in November he will immediately rescind all of President Biden’s efforts to curb gun violence.
“Every single Biden attack on gun owners and manufacturers will be terminated my very first week back in office, perhaps my first day,” Trump said, Reuters reported at the time.
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The American public strongly supports closing the gun show loophole and expanding background checks to include private sellers.
According to PolitiFact, a 2021 Pew poll found more than eight in ten Americans (81%) support expanding background checks to include private gun sellers. Two other polls that year found even stronger majorities (84% and 89%) saying they support background checks for all gun sales.
“I first heard about ‘closing the gun show loophole’ after Columbine. It’s finally been closed a quarter-century later, thanks to the bipartisan gun legislation Biden signed in 2022,” The Bulwark’s Tim Miller noted Thursday.
“Weeks after the Columbine shooting,” the LA Times reported in 2008, Democratic U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg “introduced a proposal to close the gun-show loophole in federal law. It passed the Senate on Vice President Al Gore’s tiebreaking vote, but did not survive the House.”
“President Biden saved lives today,” said former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) on Thursday. “Gabby” Giffords was the victim of a 2011 assassination attempt, and was shot in the head. In that mass shooting, outside a local supermarket during an official public “Congress on Your Corner” event, six people were murdered and 12 others were shot.
“Since 2013, I’ve fought to close this loophole in our background check system,” said Giffords, who now heads the nonprofit “dedicated to saving lives from gun violence,” that bears her name. “Now, more gun dealers will have to conduct background checks and fewer people intent on doing harm will be able to buy guns, no questions asked. Thank you, @POTUS.”
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President Biden in video announcing this new rule called on Congress to take additional action and pass universal background checks.
Watch below or at this link.
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