Pirate's Cove

Remember, gun grabbers aren’t actually grabbing guns, they just want common sense gun reform, and they definitely never move goal posts

Drivers With DUIs Shouldn’t Be Armed

(BTW, the original headline, which shows at Google News and you can see in the permalink, is Gun Control Laws Should End Sales To Drivers With DUI Convictions)

The combination of guns and alcohol is especially dangerous, and far too little has been done to address it. Federal law doesn’t restrict access to guns by people with a history of alcohol abuse, and fewer than half of U.S. states impose prohibitions of this kind. The risks to public safety are increasingly clear, and the issue demands more careful attention than lawmakers have allowed up to now.

There’s a close parallel. Over a span of years, evidence accumulated to show that domestic abusers are significantly more likely to kill somebody using a gun. The data showed that millions of American women have been threatened with a gun or shot by a domestic partner. Gradually a consensus formed to support denying firearms to convicted abusers. Federal and state laws were adopted to that end.

To be sure, they’re less effective than one would wish. The U.S. Senate’s failure to enact comprehensive background checks makes it much too easy for prohibited people to get a gun. On average, from 2006 to 2014, at least 760 Americans were shot dead each year by a spouse, former spouse or dating partner. Even so, federal and state laws designed to keep guns away from abusers make a difference.

Said comprehensive background checks wouldn’t make a difference, because people purchasing legally acquired firearms from another person in a private transaction without a background check is rare. It’s often a failure of government to report the information to the background check system which would deny a person.

Today, the links between alcohol abuse and firearm violence are also well established. “The research consistently shows that alcohol abuse is associated with violence toward self and others,” stated a comprehensive 2013 report by a consortium of leading researchers. Millions of firearm owners are binge drinkers — and among American men, deaths from alcohol-related firearm violence are on par with those from alcohol-related motor-vehicle accidents, according to a 2015 study.

Who would have guessed? Drunken gunplay is as lethal as drunken driving.

And both are illegal. Yet, these same people aren’t attempting to ban alcohol and motor vehicles, right?

Drunken-driving offenses help to identify only a subset of problem drinkers. However, like gun owners with convictions for domestic abuse, gun owners with DUI convictions are a discrete and dangerous group. For lawmakers eager to make progress against gun violence, they’re too good a target to ignore.

So, you were out with your significant other, had a few drinks, thought you were fine, got pulled over and blew a .09, just over the limit. You are then convicted of DUI. You are an upstanding citizen otherwise, work hard, do not even drink that often. And because of this you are denied your firearm. If you already have one, will the government demand you turn it in permanently? That seems implied.

The very interesting thing is that these gun grabbers are also supporters of illegal immigration, and keep telling us that illegals convicted of DUI are not bad people, that it’s a minor thing, and that the illegals should be shielded from ICE as to not be deported. That illegals with DUIs should never be deported, because it’s not a felony, nor a violent crime. Yet, they want to take away Citizens’s firearms for DUIs.