senator barack obama gun control

What Happened to the Brady Background Check Bill?

In November 30, 1993, President William Jefferson Clinton signed a bill into law which is commonly known today as the Brady Bill. The passing and signing of the bill was an answer to the attempted murder of President Ronald Reagan 12 years before in March 30, 1981. Fortunately, President Reagan was spared from death but his aide James Brady was the one been shot and was paralyzed because of the shooting. Prior to the shooting of President Reagan and Brady, there was already an existing law that prohibits the use and ownership of guns. This law was signed by President Lyndon Johnson and was known as the 1968 Gun Control Act. But the 1968 law was limited in determining whether a particular person is allowed to own a gun under circumstances provided by law. It was only in 1993 when the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was promulgated when government agencies mandated is able to determine whether a particular person has legal capacity to own and carry guns. The Brady Bill uses a background checking system (known by many as Brady Background Check System) to know on a person’s capacity to own and carry guns. The theory that the past conviction of a person of a crime is an effective indicator that a person is not in good faith to own a gun is the premise that lawmakers/authors of this bill used.

The Brady Bill has been widely accepted by the Americans because of its main purpose of lowering causes of violence and crime that uses guns as major assault weapon. Though previously there had been criticism over the law being an extreme mandate or rights’ violator, the law was still made active even to this date. Factions in American society continually protested against the Brady Bill. These factions are those who are advocates of gun ownership in the country. These people do not in particularly claim that the law is unconstitutional but rather contains loopholes.

In 1998, 5 years after the bill was signed by then President Clinton, securing of background check was made easy. In the first five years of the implementation of the bill, government agencies deputized to do the background check would require an applicant to wait for 3 to 5 working days before the result of the background check will be released. In 1998, a system using computer databases has been used by the government to speed up the background search process. The system was called NICS or National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

The attacks on the US soil on September 11, 2001 paved way for the government to become more focused on international threats rather than domestic violence. The Brady Bill was somehow overshadowed by the administration and gun ownership was indirectly promoted for the main reason of defending one’s life in times of terror. Background check has been lax since then till now if one is going to buy a gun.

However, this changed after the election of Senator Barack Obama to the Presidency four weeks before the 15th year anniversary of the Brady Bill. Speculations over Obama’s intervention to regulate gun ownership had spawn over the internet. Reports claims that since the beginning of the campaign trail, and with the expectation of the Obama win, American gun owners had made it a point to purchase every possible gun they can buy to avoid the supposed stricter law that Obama would implement the moment he seats to the Oval Office. This resulted to rise in gun sales in the country, according to reports.

Today, the Brady Bill is still active and there is no concrete evidence that Obama will be implementing policies restricting and tightening gun ownership laws. In fact, in a national television weeks before his inauguration, the President-elect promised that he will not take away the right of every American to own a gun.

Can we find a better candidate than Senator Obama in mending the fences between the two major parties?

It was interesting that I read an article on Senator Obama from May 31, 2004 in The NewYorker.

This is what drew me to the man from the beginning. We need to stop the us vs them politics and start learning to work together again to make this country a better place to live and work.

Clinton is too polarizing, she won’t help. Just make things worse.

Barrack Obama on Gun Control