Arizona Gun Sales at a Record Pace

The Tucson Citizen reports

In Arizona, it is likely that more than 200,000 new weapons will be put in buyers’ hands after background checks this year. That figure doesn’t include firearms purchased at gun shows and through private transactions. Such non-tracked sales are thought to account for 40 percent of all sales, adding about 150,000 guns purchased annually. The estimated sales total: about 350,000 guns per year.

Retailers report that demand for small handguns that can be concealed in a purse or briefcase has soared, while sales of rifles and shotguns have remained flat or declined.

Ya get that? Thousands, maybe tens-of-thousands of untrained, unqualified people will be carrying guns in Arizona from now on. Do you think that'll do more good than harm?

Although background checks are required for guns purchased through licensed retailers, no such screening is needed for guns purchased at the more than 20 major gun shows held in Arizona each year or through private transactions among individuals.

Non-licensed sales, which are hard to track, are thought to represent about 40 percent of the approximately 20 million guns that are sold in the U.S. each year.

This is the number-one problem. It's not theft, which the pro gun guys keep pushing as the main source of guns which flow into the criminal world. They do that so they can claim to be victims, innocent victims, which is debatable anyway since so many of them leave guns lying around the house for the burglars to take. But by far the two main sources of guns which end up in criminal hands are done through legal sales under today's pathetic gun control laws.

Private sales which require no background check as well as straw purchases which do, account for most of the guns used in crime. You know why they're so difficult to trace?  There's no licensing and registration, that's why.

With a properly enforced licensing of gun owners and registration of each gun bought to one of those licensees, along with requiring background checks on every sale, we'd have the problem under control.  So, why do so many gun owners resist this so vehemently?

The claim we most often hear to explain why they won't accept licensing and registration is because confiscation of guns would follow. I don't believe that and I don't think they do either. Given the American culture and the proliferation of guns, I don't think we can realistically expect anything like that. There would first have to be radical changes in the government and its relationship with citizens, the entire system of democratic elections and power brokering would have to be changed first.  No, that's not the real reason they resist.

They resist for the simple reason they don't want to be inconvenienced. Please keep in mind that most people, even most gun owners, do not oppose such initiatives which would obviously do good.  It's the very loud and well-financed minority of extremists that we hear this from. Self-centered in the extreme, they just don't want to be inconvenienced, never mind the nearly 100 a day who are killed with guns or the 200 others a day who are wounded. Never mind that many of them are innocent, truly innocent victims. None of that matters to the gun-rights extremist.


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