North Carolina state House votes to allow permitted concealed handguns at college campuses and places that serve alcohol

By an overwhelming two-to-one vote of 76-38, the North Carolina state House passed a bill allowing permitted concealed handguns on college campuses.  As with other states, private universities will be allowed to post signs that ban permitted concealed handguns.  Disappointingly, it would also not allow concealed handguns in classes, which means it would ban guns to and from student's cars.  With 44 Democrats in the state House, not even all the Democrats voted against the bill.  From WRAL television:

State House lawmakers voted late Monday night to allow concealed weapons on college campuses, state property, greenways, bike trails, at sporting events and in businesses that serve alcohol. . . .

However, the proposal faced stiff opposition from University of North Carolina system officials.

Sponsor Rep. Justin Burr, R-Stanly, said recent reports of campus crime illustrate why students and faculty with concealed carry permits should be allowed to have firearms locked in their cars on campus.

"This doesn’t allow them to carry in the classroom," Burr said. "Please tell me why in the world we would want to prevent law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves."

Private universities and schools could opt not to permit weapons on campus, but public schools and universities would have to comply.

Local officials also would no longer be allowed to outlaw guns on greenways, biking and walking paths. . . .

By the way, a Democrat amendment to impose background checks on purchases at gun shows was soundly defeated.

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Is Senator Ayotte changing her position on the gun background check bill?

There are background checks and background checks.  I have written about the changes that need to be made in the current bills to make them acceptable to me.  From Politico:

Facing a wave of intense criticism and plunging poll numbers after opposing a bill to expand background checks on gun purchases, New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte tried some damage control in an op-ed published Monday. 

“Out of state special interests are running false ads attacking me and even lying about my efforts to prevent gun-related violence,” Ayotte, a Republican, wrote in the op-ed, published by Patch news sites in New Hampshire. “I want to set the record straight: I support effective background checks and in fact voted recently to improve the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).” . . .

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My interview at National Review on my new book "At the Brink" is available here

My interview at National Review starts this way:

After the defeat of the Manchin-Toomey background-check bill, and the subsequent demonization of the Senate, Senators Manchin and Toomey are reportedly back at work on bipartisan legislation addressing gun control. John R. Lott, author of the new book At the Brink, who has been researching gun policy for decades, talks about the state of the debate with National Review Online’s Kathryn Jean Lopez. 

KATHRYN JEAN LOPEZ: Gabby Giffords has accused the Senate of being in the grips of the gun lobby. Is there another explanation for the defeat of the Manchin-Toomey bill? 

JOHN R. LOTT: Yes, there is. The politicians were simply representing the voters in their districts. 

The accusation that politicians were attempting to please the gun lobby at the expense of their constituents, which is based on the oft-repeated assertion that 80 to 90 percent of the public say they favor background checks, is simply not credible. The survey questions on which this statistic is based proved nothing more than that respondents wished to disarm criminals. The questions posed were about a hypothetical, idealized system of background checks, not about the actual legislation facing Congress. . . .

 The rest of the interview is available here.

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While Democrats are claiming that gun control is hurting Republicans, how come Obama is so far underwater on the issue?

I have been very skeptical of the claims that Republicans have been hurt by their opposition to the Senate gun control bill.  Yet, it is curious that Obama's low approval rating on the gun issue isn't getting similar attention.  From Politico:

On gun policy, some 52 percent disapprove of his approach, while 41 percent approve. That could be due in part to the loss in the Senate of the gun control proposal he pushed for expanded background checks for gun buyers. . . .

BTW, it is interesting to see that Obama's handling of immigration is also underwater.

Compare the media coverage with Senator Kelly Ayotte and her vote on guns with the media coverage with Obama's low standing on the gun issue.  This also from Politico:

Pro-gun control activists, who attended the meeting, were incensed. Security brushed aside two women who approached Ayotte and demanded to speak with the first-term Republican about her vote against expanded background checks for commercial gun sales, underscoring the lingering controversy that continues to hover over the New Hampshire senator. . . . 

The emotional fight threatens to transform Ayotte — a young conservative Republican woman whose star is on the rise — into a polarizing figure back home on a contentious issue. Instead of taking up the banner of gun rights, Ayotte is seeking a lower profile on the subject in a state where she’s become the last Republican in the all-female congressional delegation. 

“It hurts her,” said Kathy Sullivan, a longtime Democratic operative and former head of the state party here. “Elections are won in New Hampshire with the vote of independents, particularly independent women. Independent women will not favor a candidate who does not believe in background checks. Will it be the only issue? No, but it will be an issue.” . . .

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Push to get expanded background checks through the initiative process

I worry that with all the misinformation out there about background checks (and here) that bad legislation will be passed.  Anyway, the Associated Press has this sobering piece of news.

On Monday, proponents of universal background checks in Washington will announce their plan to launch a statewide initiative campaign that would require the collection of some 300,000 signatures, according to a person involved in the initiative planning who spoke on condition of anonymity so as not to pre-empt the official announcement. The advocates have scheduled a fundraiser in Seattle at the end of next month and hope to have a campaign budget in the millions of dollars. 

Ballot measures may be an option elsewhere, too. Hildy Saizow, president of Arizonans for Gun Safety, said an initiative is one of the things the group will be considering as it reconsiders strategies. An organizer in Oregon was focused on the Legislature for now but wouldn't rule out a ballot measure in the future if lawmakers fail to pass a proposed bill there. . . .  

Brian Malte, director of mobilization at the national nonprofit lobbying group Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said passage through Congress is the ideal in order to have a national solution and so that states with strong gun laws aren't undermined by nearby states with weaker standards. He noted that initiative campaigns are costly endeavors that can drain important, limited resources.  

Still, Malte said, the ballot measures are an option to consider. . . .

Thanks as always to Tony Troglio for this link.

On the other hand, given the misleading polls and the sad support that gun control supporters often get (see this with the "Five sad pictures from today's anti-NRA march"), possibly initiatives are the way to show that these ideas can be defeated.

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Remember those claims that 90% of Americans wanted the Senate background check bill to pass?: Well, it was clearly wrong

Despite assurances by the likes of Nate Silver that these are solid polls showing "Overwhelming majorities of 80 to 90 percent of the public say they favor background checks," I have previously noted my skepticism of these claims.  To me, it wasn't too surprising that the Senate voted down the gun control bill about 10 days ago.  My concern is that people were really just being asked about whether they wanted to keep criminals from getting guns, not about the particular legislation being voted on by the Senate.  Well, now there is another poll by the PEW Research Center that I think is much more accurate.  It asks people whether they are happy that the Senate gun control bill was stopped.  Apparently, both Republicans and Independents are generally happy that it was stopped.  My guess is that Republicans should pay a lot more attention to what Independents and Republicans wanted than Democrats who would never have voted for the Republicans anyway.  It looks to me that Republicans voted the way that their constituents wanted.  So Republicans shouldn't really care that among all voters the poll showed support of 47 to 39 percent.  They should look at the results by political affiliation.

Many, such as the New York Times, paint a picture of Senators who both simultaneously opposed the will of 90 percent of their voters and at the same time quake in fear of the NRA. Here is a piece by Joe Nocera at the New York Times on April 19th:

The four Democrats — along with many Republicans — quake in fear of the National Rifle Association. In 1994, Baucus voted in favor of the assault rifle ban — and then nearly lost his re-election bid. He never again stood up to the N.R.A. Yes, his phones were undoubtedly jammed this week. Still, it seemed to me that his unanswered phone was a potent symbol. I could almost picture him cowering in his office, waiting for us to stop asking why he sold the country down the river. . . .

Note in Baucus' case, he is retiring and yet he still voted against the so-called "universal background check" bill.  Might Mr. Nocera re-examine his piece?

The one US Senator who gun control advocates claim has been hurt by her opposition to the Senate gun control bill is Kelly Ayotte (see also here, though one will note that six months and a lot of other things have occurred since the last approval rating poll for Senator Ayotte).  Yet, it is interesting that the Democratic controlled state House of Representatives in New Hampshire isn't passing new gun control either.  From the New Hampshire Union Leader:

"NH State House Unmoved by Newtown Shootings" was the headline of a Patch.com story about a recent gathering of "area gun violence experts," hosted by the Portsmouth Democratic Party (of course) and including a representative of States United to Prevent Gun Violence, at the Portsmouth Public Library. 

A more accurate headline would have read, "Portsmouth Gun Control Panel Unmoved by Reality." 

According to the story, the "gun lobby" is so strong in New Hampshire that it will be next to impossible for anti-gun politicians to pass "universal background checks," allegedly making massacres like the Newtown tragedy more likely in this state. . . .

A collection of polls on gun issues is available here.

Other tangentially related material

By the way, the Nate Silver analysis of how Senators would vote on the Manchin-Toomey bill has some major problems, he uses a very unreliable measure of gun ownership from Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (it shows among the lowest gun ownership rates of any survey that I know of).  If you use a bad survey, you get a lot of noise and it makes it more likely that you won't get a statistically significant result.  I also like the way he runs a regression after the fact rather than predicting how people were going to vote before the Senate vote.  Letting him play around with different factors (we have no idea how many regressions that he ran before he decided to report the one that he did) makes the predictive power of that regression pretty useless.

UPDATE: Democratic polling firm Public Policy Polling (PPP) claims to find drop in support for five Senators, but for some of these polls the time since the last poll has been over six months, though a couple of others have just been since February.   

UPDATE: Obama's approval rating on guns has also fallen.  As one headline put it, "Obama's Approval Rating on Gun Control Plummets."  Here is part of the June 4th article:

Nearly half of voters think President Obama's doing a poor job at handling gun control, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll released Tuesday. Only 37 percent of voters give Obama positive reviews for the way he's handling gun control as opposed to the 46 percent of voters who give him a poor rating.  

The president's poor approval numbers have been climbing over the past few months. They were 34 percent in February and have climbed 13 points since then. . . .

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Gun control push not going away: "Senators Quietly Seeking New Path on Gun Control"

Admittedly, given that this is from the New York Times, it might not be something that one wants to put much weight on, but it is still a warning that one should be careful about:

Talks to revive gun control legislation are quietly under way on Capitol Hill as a bipartisan group of senators seeks a way to bridge the differences that led to last week’s collapse of the most serious effort to overhaul the country’s gun laws in 20 years. . . .

Meanwhile Vice President Biden promises:

"For the first time ever, you have people who are for gun safety, for increasing background checks," Biden said. "Two out of three of them say it will be a major determining factor in how I vote. That's the political dynamic that has changed. So I think we're going to get this anyway. I think this will pass before the year is out, within this Congress." . . .

Earlier Senator Harry Reid made this promise:

"Make no mistake, this debate is not over," Reid, D-Nev., said Thursday after lawmakers voted down a string of amendments to the bill. "In fact, this fight is just beginning." . . .Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said the bill is not dead, though it might have to be altered."Either through the fury of constituents who were wronged yesterday or by revisions to the bill, we will try to bring this back up," Murphy said. . . . 

UPDATE: "Manchin says he's working to get another Senate vote on gun background check" 

. . . Manchin told “Fox News Sunday” that he’s going to rework the proposal to get it back to the Senate floor.
“We’re going to work this bill with all of our hearts,” he told Fox News. . . .
On Friday, Toomey said he had no plans to revive the proposal.
"My own view is very simple: The Senate has had its vote. We've seen the outcome of that vote. I am not aware of any reason to believe that if we had the vote again that we'd have a different outcome," he said, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Manchin told Fox: “I don’t think he’s done.” . . .
Senate Majority Harry Reid said days after the defeat of the Manchin-Toomey proposal that he has “hit pause” on efforts to pass comprehensive gun-control legislation.
He said last week the proposal remains a work in progress but no action is being taken now.

The full transcript of the Fox News Sunday interview is available here.

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New Philadelphia Inquirer piece: "The problems of gun checks"

My new piece from yesterday started this way:

Everyone wants to keep criminals from getting guns. However, expanded background checks are not the simple answer that Sens. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) and Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) think they are. 

Unfortunately, as the Senate considers the Manchin-Toomey amendment, Toomey is simply wrong to assert: "It's the people who fail a criminal or mental-health background check who we don't want having guns." 

Toomey apparently does not understand how the background-check system works. Take his claim on Sunday: "Since checks began in 1998, more than 100,000 people who are ineligible to own guns have been denied them each year." Just because someone is "initially denied" permission to buy a gun doesn't mean that he is really ineligible to own guns. . . .

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New Ad by "Mayors Against Illegal Guns"

Text:

“The grief was staggering, and now more than 100 days after the massacre at Newtown, the US Senate starts to act.”
“Some Democrats and Republicans are coming together to support comprehensive background checks on gun sales that will protect the Second Amendment and help keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals.”
“Ninety percent of America supports comprehensive background checks. Call your senators and urge them to support the bipartisan effort for comprehensive background checks. Demand action now.”

This isn't obnoxious like a radio ad that I recently heard from Bloomberg's group and unfortunately it is right that this move is bipartisan, but these guys aren't working "to protect the Second Amendment."  The background check bill is an attempt to make it more costly for law-abiding people to obtain guns for protection, establish a national gun registry, and apparently include voluntary mental help that people may have gotten as a permanent prohibition on getting a gun.  As to the accuracy of the poll see my discussion here.

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Rasmussen: "Only 41% believe more background checks will reduce gun violence."

While Scott Rasmussen indicates that background checks has "overwhelming support," he notes that relatively few think that it will actually lower crime rates.  What would happen to the percent of support if:

1) the question noted the creation of a gun registry, 

2) the fees that would be required on the transfer of guns, or 

3) that it was almost always law-abiding citizens who have been stopped from buying guns.

Even in liberal New Jersey with heavy gun control law, people are no better than split on whether gun control laws work.

New Jerseyans are split on whether stricter gun laws would reduce violence with 47 percent agreeing and 47 percent disagreeing. But among gun-owning households, 69 percent say stricter gun laws would not reduce violence compared to 53 who feel differently. Similarly, 74 percent of NRA supporters believe violence would not be reduced, compared to only 28 percent of opponents. A solid majority of Democrats (61 percent) say stricter laws would reduce violence, but only 39 percent of independents and 35 percent of Republicans agree. . . .

Here is an additional discussion from the National Journal: 

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that 65 percent of women favor stronger gun laws, compared to 44 percent of men. That’s consistent with previous polling; a recent Quinnipiac University poll showed 61 percent of women and 45 percent of men in favor stricter gun laws. . . . 

Although gun ownership among women has increased over the previous decades, men are still three times more likely to own guns than women, according to a March Pew Center survey. And opinions on the effectiveness of gun laws vary greatly depending on whether you own a gun or if there is one in your house. According to the Pew survey, 66 percent of people who live in gun-free homes say stricter gun laws would reduce mass-shooting casualties; only 35 percent of people in gun-owning households agreed. . . . .

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How quickly would House of Representatives vote on gun control if a bill passes the Senate?

With the narrow Republican majority in the House, it won't take many Republican switches to pass a gun control bill.

Republican leadership aides have cautioned against the expectation of quick House action, noting that the Senate has already been working on gun legislation for nearly four months. The House, an aide said, would expect to take at least as much time.
For gun-control advocates, the political atmosphere in the GOP-controlled House underscores the heavy lift even to expand background checks and crack down on gun trafficking and straw purchases,  . . .

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Cook and Ludwig keep falsely claiming that their 1997 NIJ uses data from 1993 and 1994

A 1997 NIJ survey claims that they studied purchases of guns in 1993 and 1994.

If you look at the data you will see that the survey was from November 1991 to November/December 1994, not 1993 and 1994 as Cook and Ludwig keep claiming.  If you go through the data, you will see you only get their sample size and numbers that match theirs if you go back for three years.  Note also that people are asked about purchases over the preceding year so questions asked in November 1994 cover November of each preceding year.

You might think that this is pedantic, but more than 40 percent of their data is obtained during the November 1991 to November/December 1992 period.  It has disappointed me that Cook and Ludwig keep repeating this false claim.

The longer the time period not only places more of the purchases before the February 28, 1994 Brady Act but it also creates the type of biases that I discussed regarding the Washington Post survey for Maryland. One can't even just assume that purchases are uniformly made over this period.  The problem is that sales were massive before the Brady Act went into effect and then plummeted right after the law went into effect. As to the biases, the buying of a gun is probably a much more memorable event than whether there was a background check.  If so, people will remember the purchases, but not remember whether there was a background check that went along with it.  You will see a discrete jump in how important this bias is once you ask people about more than just events over the previous year.

Cook and Ludwig redo should get a top figure of 16%, not 22% that Cook and Ludwig claim.

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New PoliceOne's Gun Policy & Law Enforcement Survey: Police and their views on gun control

The new PoliceOne.com survey of police and their views on gun control is available here (article is here).  PoliceOne has about 450,000 members when the survey was done.  Here is information on previous surveys as well as a piece that I wrote for the WSJ.com.

A full 86 percent feel that casualties would have been reduced or avoided in recent tragedies like Newtown and Aurora if a legally-armed citizen was present (casualties reduced: 80 percent; avoided altogether: 60 percent). . . .
In addition, the survey asked, “On a scale of one to five — one being low and five being high — how important do you think legally-armed citizens are to reducing crime rates overall?”
Three quarters of you (75 percent) answered either four or five, with more than 50 percent answering five. . . .

I find myself in virtually complete agreement with the police in answering this survey.  I am not a big fan of open carry, but I am of concealed handguns.  I agree with them on the efficacy of gun buybacks, bans on ammunition magazines that hold more 10 rounds, national databases on gun ownership, and background checks.  

The answers to question #20 are extremely important: 77 percent of officers think that private gun ownership is either extremely or very important in reducing crime.  

Question #19 shows 91 percent support right-to-carry concealed carry with a background check.

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Colorado sheriff won't be enforce new state gun laws

From Fox News:

Weld County Sheriff John Cooke won’t enforce new state gun measures expected to be signed into law by Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper, arguing the proposed firearms restrictions give a "false sense of security." 

Lawmakers in Colorado on Friday approved a landmark expansion of background checks on firearm purchases. Earlier in the week, Colorado lawmakers approved a 15-round limit on ammunition magazines.  

Both measures are awaiting the expected approval of the governor. 

Cooke told GreeleyTribune.com that Democrats in the state legislature are uninformed and scrambling in response to the Aurora movie theater shooting and other recent tragedies.
"They’re feel-good, knee-jerk reactions that are unenforceable," he told the news outlet. . . . .

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Background check bill passed out of Senate Judiciary Committee has slim chance of passing full Senate

From Politico:

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a Democratic bill calling for background checks on all gun sales, which could potentially lead to the biggest change in U.S. gun laws in years. 

But the likelihood of the full Senate approving such a bill is slim because of objections from Republicans. 

The bill was approved on a 10-8 party-line vote and mandates background checks on all gun purchases and sales, including private transactions. State governments will also be able to tap into a national criminal background check system. . . . 

Without such Republican support, Democrats from conservative states are unlikely to sign on to the measure. Coburn objected to the idea that permanent records being kept of gun purchases. . . .

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What the future might look like: "California Seizes Guns as Owners Lose Right to Keep Arms"

This story is as sympathetic as possible to the government going into a person's home and taking their guns.  Nine officers going in to the home seems like more than a little bit of overkill.  As far as I can tell from the story, there is no discussion that indicates that this gun owner represented a threat to himself or others. From Bloomberg:

Wearing bulletproof vests and carrying 40-caliber Glock pistols, nine California Justice Department agents assembled outside a ranch-style house in a suburb east of Los Angeles. They were looking for a gun owner who’d recently spent two days in a mental hospital.  

 They knocked on the door and asked to come in. About 45 minutes later, they came away peacefully with three firearms.  

California is the only state that tracks and disarms people with legally registered guns who have lost the right to own them, according to Attorney General Kamala Harris. Almost 20,000 gun owners in the state are prohibited from possessing firearms, including convicted felons, those under a domestic violence restraining order or deemed mentally unstable. . . . .

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Senator Schumer says that background checks are unenforceable without gun registration

Schumer is apparently going forward with an expanded background check bill without any Republican co-sponsors.  I would guess that makes it likely that the bill will die.  From The Hill newspaper:

Schumer has negotiated for weeks with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) to reach a bipartisan deal on background checks, but the talks stalled over the thorny question of how to implement an expansion of background checks. 

Schumer argues expanded background checks are unenforceable unless sellers or gun dealers who perform the checks are required to keep records. Coburn says gun owners will not accept the bureaucratic onus of keeping paperwork for exercising their Second Amendment rights. . . .

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Issues with a Washington Post Poll that claims: "77 percent of Maryland residents who bought a gun in the past 10 years say they went through a background check"

According to the Washington Post article, 81% say that they bought a gun at a traditional gun store, but fewer, 77 percent, say that they had a background check.  Even if only half bought their guns through dealers at gun shows (4.5 percent and that is undoubtedly extremely conservative since my understanding is that the gun shows in Maryland don't even let you have a table unless you are a registered dealer), that leaves a big gap between people buying from places where we would know that they would have to have background checks and those who say that they have had a check.  81% + 4.5% would imply at least 85.5% would be in places where they would have for sure had checks, and presumably even a couple of the 10 percent who bought the guns elsewhere would have had to get checks.

From the Washington Post story:

In the new poll, 77 percent of Maryland residents who bought a gun in the past 10 years say they went through a background check; 21 percent say they did not. (Given the rarity of Marylanders purchasing guns, there is a sizable 11.5 percentage point error margin for the results among this group.)
The vast majority of buyers — 81 percent — say they made their purchase at a traditional gun store rather than a gun show (9 percent) or somewhere else (10 percent). The poll finds little correlation between location of purchase and undergoing a background check. . . .

UPDATE: Glenn Kessler was nice enough to email back and forth with me on this issue.  The WP pollster responded this way:

Your researcher’s intuition is correct, but I think slicing up the data this finely goes a little beyond the capabilities of the survey. Just over 100 gun buyers were interviewed, only 8 of whom bought from a gun show. I think the survey alone is not sufficient to conclude that there’s widespread shirking of background checks at places where they are required.    
The underlying notion is correct—some survey respondents report buying guns from traditional gun stores without background checks, and gun show and private sales don’t account for the 21 percent who report no background check. As we note in the article, “it’s not clear the people  who say they didn’t undergo background checks broke the law. The survey asked about gun buying experiences over a 10-year period, so respondent recall may be an issue. The point precision is also not exact, given the relatively small number of Marylanders who say they have purchased a gun in the past decade.”    
We are working to understand these numbers deeper, and will hopefully understand better any possible issues with recall or exemptions (law enforcement officers and military/vets are exempted from some background checks). 

This is how I responded:

Thanks very much, Glenn, though I don't think that answers my question.  I am not so much trying to get into what individual categories are as seeing whether the two totals should be somewhat roughly the same.  I am really just saying that the number of purchases through FFLs has to be significantly above 81%.  I was just trying to motivate with a simple example how much it has to be above 81%, not that I was trying to breakdown the components.  Either these stores or places didn't have checks and broke the law or people didn't understand that they were having checks done or after up to 10 years they don't really remember whether a check was done.  I have a hard time believing that the first option is true.  The results indicate to me that they are significantly biased towards making the number of sales without background checks look larger than they are. Do I have permission to share this response?  Thank you very much. 

My biggest concern about the survey is how long of a period that people are asked about purchasing guns over.

I know that shorter time period reduces sample size a lot, but my biggest concern is the 10 year time window.  All the surveys that I have been involved with indicates to me that the error rate in answers increases dramatically once you go back more than one year (possibly like what we were discussing below).  If you ask people about more than a year you will start getting them including purchases outside that window and you will also tend to get more unusual events simply because people are more likely to quickly recall very unusual events when they are suddenly asked about them.

One obvious example involves defensive gun uses.  The bigger the window that you ask people about the greater the share of defensive uses will involve people firing their gun. 

In the case of purchases, the buying of a gun is probably a much more memorable event than whether there was a background check.  People will remember the purchases, but not remember whether there was a background check that went along with it.

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Gun Control groups pushing hard for gun registration

Universal background checks aren't going to work anyway, but without gun registration they won't even work in theory because you won't be able to prove whether family members or others have exchanged ownership of guns without going through background checks. 

Coburn, the group’s ambassador to gun rights groups like the National Rifle Association, won’t accept a record-keeping requirement on the grounds that it could lead to government overreach. Schumer and Manchin, who are in regular contact with gun control groups, say any bill without a records provision would be as toothless as an honor system. . . . 

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Assault weapon ban not going anyplace, but there might be a strong push for more background checks

The Hill newspaper points out how Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) are unlikely to push for the assault weapon ban.  But at the same there is a push for broader background checks.

Manchin is part of a quartet of legislators working to tighten background checks required to purchase a gun. The other members of the group are Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). . . .

What worries me is Manchin's discussion about these background checks: "What we are trying to do is have a well balanced piece of legislation which I think makes sense and do an awful lot of good."

For my concerns about the push for background checks see this discussion here.

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