That was good enough to flag him in the computer and the gun shops tossed him out. He bought a couple guns from an unlicensed individual. And that brings me to the point of this column the obvious and pervasive lack of enforcement of existing gun laws. Because he can. There are more than 20,000 laws governing the sale and ownership of guns.
Problem is, people break the laws all the time.
Because they can. And with all the wailing and gnashing of teeth in Washington these days, one would think things were getting better, that the feds were getting tougher on the breakers of gun laws. But that isn t quite the case. In fact, the current administration s record on prosecuting violators of federal firearms laws is abysmal. In 1992 there were more than 7,000 prosecutions for federal firearms violations.