Lancaster Intelligencer Journal
April 26, 2010

We live in an increasingly polarized nation. If President Obama says it's a good day, half the population will object. If Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says something positive about a piece of legislation, Democrats will adopt a glass-is-half-empty view.

So when an overwhelming number of National Rifle Association members say they support national background checks for buyers at gun shows, those who favor stricter gun regulations are, well, surprised.

According to a December 2009 poll by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, 69 percent of NRA members and 85 percent of non-NRA members support background checks at gun shows. Fully 82 percent of NRA members and 86 percent on non-members support laws prohibiting suspected terrorists from getting from purchasing guns.

The two are linked. During a teleconference last week, five of the 186 Pennsylvania Mayors Against Illegal Guns, spoke of the need for national legislation to require background checks. The conference coincided with a series of commercials asking U.S. Sens. Arlen Specter and Bob Casey to close the gun-show loophole.

Although Pennsylvania requires background checks at gun shows, the neighboring states of Ohio, Maryland and New Jersey do not.

Several mayors said that crimes in their communities had been committed by people who were denied a gun in Pennsylvania, but simply drove to a nearby state to purchase it.

Reading Mayor Thomas McMahon said two Reading police officers have been killed in the line of duty, and the guns were traced to purchases in other states.

The guns, McMahon said, were "in the hands of people who should not have had them."

MAIG's proposal is a matter of common sense. It simply asks Congress to replace the patchwork quilt of state gun show laws with a uniform law requiring a national background check for individuals purchasing firearms at gun shows. That would prohibit criminals who have been barred from purchasing a firearm in one state from getting the gun in an adjacent state.

Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray said criminals do not recognize jurisdictions "but they do know where to get things.''

Mandating background checks also would help reduce access to firearms by terrorists.

Max Nacheman, MAIG's state coordinator, said the loophole has allowed those associated with terrorist organizations to buy guns at gun shows in this country and ship them overseas.

Closing the loophole, he said, would enable the federal government to link the National Criminal Information Center database with the terrorist watch list.

What the mayors have proposed is not an attack on the Second Amendment. It is a common-sense approach to keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people.

Said Mike Carroll, president of the International Association of Police Chiefs: "Illegal guns in the hands of illegals should be illegal."

Amen.