Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: HR8 Gun Legislation

Episode Date: June 15, 2022

Today we dive into HR8, a gun bill supported by 90% of Americans that will likely never get through the Senate.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh. There's Chuck Jerry's here

in the saddle for Dave, and this is short stuff, like I said. That's right. We're going to try and get through this next 12 minutes without our brains exploding and without screaming into the microphone. And without receiving death threats when this episode comes out. That's right, because we are talking about HR eight. It is the bipartisan background checks act of 2021. It is a bill that originated in the house in the United States to try and close loopholes on gun purchase background checks. And we thought this might be a good way to dip our toe into the gun debate after the events at Uvaldi. And here we go.

Yeah, the Uvaldi shooting is definitely, if you've paid any attention whatsoever to the news, really kind of breathes some energy into the concept of background checks. And some bills that were already out there, like that HR eight, the bipartisan background checks act of 2021, was introduced in March. And now all of a sudden, it seems like it's got some legs like it didn't have before because of that shooting, which is surprising to me, Chuck, because like we didn't do anything after Sandy Hook. Somehow, I don't know, maybe two is too many now. Who knows, but it does seem like the zeitgeist has kind of shifted after Uvaldi. Yeah, I think so. Just nuts and bolts of the bill. It passed the U.S. House, like you said,

last March, 227 to 203. But of course, died in the Senate, as so many bills do, because it gets filibustered by the Republican Party. And they won't even talk about it. And there's a 50-50 chamber right now. We want to thank Patrick Keiger at How Stuff Works for this, for this Newsy article again. And, you know, Democrats wanted to, I think they were hopeful that they could at least put it on the Senate Democrats on the legislative calendar. That has not happened. But let's talk for a minute on how people buy guns in the U.S., eh? Eh, so when you buy a gun, especially if you buy a gun from a federal licensed gun dealer, they say, here, fill out this form. And this form is submitted to the National Instinct

Criminal Background Check System. And it has a bunch of different questions on it. Rather personal questions, but they make sense when you're buying a gun in that context. They say, have you ever been indicted for a felony? Have you ever been convicted of a felony? Have you ever used drugs? Have you ever been committed to a mental institution by a court order? Or have you ever been dishonorably discharged by the military? Have you been convicted of domestic violence? Are you a legal resident of the U.S.? Are you going to fill this out? And then the firearms dealer is going to turn around, contact the FBI's NICS service, and they're going to run a background check on you.

That's right. And see if everything checks out and if you are eligible to buy that gun. This was created in 1993 with the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, because if we all remember after Ronald Reagan had an assassination attempt on his life, there was gun legislation. And they actually did something back then about it, including Ronald Reagan and Republicans. Well, yeah, because Brady was one of his staffers and he was paralyzed as a result of that assassination attempt. And so any gun control legislation that came after that usually bears his name. That's right. We are in a different place these days. It's a different Republican party. And save your emails. We're not just

picking on one party over the other. This is just straight up facts on how these bills go down. A lot of people, and eventually we're going to get around to an NRA episode in full, I guess, a lot of people will, a lot of people will blame the NRA, but I personally believe, and I've seen articles sort of backing this up these days, that like the NRA has already sort of done its job. And even if they went away completely, things would still be about the same, because what they have created is a situation where a more moderate Republican who might be in favor of common sense gun legislation that anywhere from 60 to 90% of Americans are in favor of won't even consider this legislation because they want to hold on to office because they will

get primaried out by a further right Republican who says, I will not touch any gun legislation. So vote for me. And that's kind of where we are today. Yeah. So back to background checks, like that NICS service started in 1998. There just wasn't background checks before then. And since then they've done 300 million plus background checks for gun purchases. So that means that at least 300 million guns have been sold legitimately since 1998 in the US. And that of those 300 million, Chuck, 1.5 million were flagged and were denied the ability to purchase that firearm because they didn't pass the NICS background check. And so on the one side, a lot of people say 1.5 million out of 300. That's pretty good math.

On the other side, they say, yeah, like a bunch of that 1.5 million people were denied unfairly. It was ungrounded. And there is a process to appeal your denial if you are actually denied. But the point is, as society is saying, there are certain kinds of people that we don't trust with firearms and we're trying to root them out. And the best place to root them out is when they go to buy a gun. It makes sense. But there's a loophole to this that is so huge that anybody, including convicted felons, can walk right through it and purchase a gun on the other side. That's right. We're going to take a break. Let you ponder that ridiculousness. And we will talk about that loophole right after this.

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All right. The big loophole is that there is a lot of gray area of what constitutes a licensed or a non-licensed gun dealer. They talk about occasional sales or purchases being exempt from the background check requirement. And there is no real clear line establishing what that even means. It's a rule of thumb. It's very vague that someone who just sells a lot of guns and they want to make their living selling guns or make a profit selling guns, yeah, not even make a living, make a profit selling guns, has to be licensed to conduct these background checks. But you've heard about gun shows and the internet and things like that. If you sell guns at a gun show, you can claim to not be like, you know, like,

hey, I'm just an occasional seller. I just go to these gun shows and sell tons and tons of guns for profit. And that enables people to walk in there and buy a gun without having any kind of background check. Yeah. So if you sell guns, you're still selling a gun. But if you say, I only do it occasionally, the government basically has to say, oh, okay, you don't need a license. And there's no requisite. There's no definition. There's no, like you said, it's a very gray area on what constitutes occasional or who's required to have a federal license. But if you aren't a federally licensed gun dealer, that means that you can go sell a gun without doing a background check. Right. And in 2015, that's the most recent stat we have. They estimated 22% of gun owners

bought their weapon within the previous couple of years without going through a background check. It is undoubtedly bigger now because whenever there are mass shootings, there is a rush on buying guns in the United States. People don't back off from buying them. They buy more of them. So I don't know what the percentage is now, but even if we go with 22%, that's a lot of people buying guns without a background check. Right. So if you're a person who you know that you're going to be flagged by the NICS background check, all you have to do is find yourself a gun show or go on the internet and find somebody who's selling guns on the internet and buy from an unlicensed firearm dealer. And that ends up, and like I said, like with background checks,

we're saying society doesn't want certain people to have, we don't trust them with firearms. And one of those people are, again, convicted felons. They're not legally allowed to own a firearm in the United States after they've been convicted of a felony, unless I believe that they are granted clemency by the president or the governor. Right. So there's a kind of a unnerving stat then that ties into that. And that is that in that same 2015 Annals of Internal Medicine study, they found that 96% of prison inmates who had been previously prohibited from owning a gun and that that was the gun that they used in the crime that they were in prison for now, they'd obtained that gun from an unlicensed seller. And that is a big problem for every

law-abiding citizen of these United States. Right. And every law-abiding gun owner, frankly. They're citizens too. That's right. If you are a, if you're thinking like, well, there should be exceptions to this, like you should be able to hand your gun down to your child if you're a hunter or sell your gun to your uncle if, you know, instead of them having to go to a gun shop, they can do that. They have carved out some exceptions in HR8 that still hasn't passed. Law enforcement obviously could transfer guns without background checks. Family members could gift them to family members or sell them to family members. You could inherit a gun without a background check. Or like in the movies, if the zombies are coming in and you throw somebody

the gun and they go, I don't know how to use this thing. And they say, just pointed at them and squeezed the trigger. You can even do that and not have to, you know, face a penalty as long as after the zombies are killed off, they say, here's your gun back. Right. Because anybody can agree, the zombies would get to you and eat your brain during the background check process. It's not that fast. So they carved it out. Especially if there's a 10-day waiting period, which is another House bill that might be voted on in the Senate soon along with HR8. Right. This is not when it comes to polling the American public. This isn't something where it's like, oh, it's like 54% to 46% in favor of. Poll after poll comes in. April 2021,

Kenipiac University poll. Kenipiac? How do you pronounce that? I always see that. Quinnipiac. Okay. They do a lot of polls. It's one of those, for sure. 89% of Americans favored universal or nearly universal background checks. A 2021 poll in March from morning consult was 84%, including 77% of voting Republicans. And then a 2018 Gallup poll, the Crème de la Crème of polls, found that Americans favored mandatory background checks by 92% to 7%. The role of our elected officials is supposedly to act on their constituents' desires. But again, this is not happening because of the things that I mentioned earlier. No. And again, I think it really bears repeating.

There's nothing about closing the gun show loophole for background checks that is taking guns from people who have guns, preventing legal law-abiding citizens from buying as many guns as they want under the law. It's simply saying, we're going to shut down this huge loophole that allows people who shouldn't have guns to go buy guns as many as they like. And yeah, that's just common sense. That's extremely mainstream thinking. And it doesn't violate the constitutional rights given by the Second Amendment in any way, shape, or form. And again, it has the backing of the public. And so, again, it's about to go die in public. They actually tied a blindfold around it and gave it a last cigarette as they're shoving it out

into the Senate. And it's just not going to go anywhere. But Joe Manchin apparently was quoted as saying, he believes that the Yuvaldi shooting is going to impel the Senate to actually start cutting deals and that something will get passed, even if it's not exactly HR8. Yeah, I'm reading this on an hourly basis. And there are bipartisan talks that seem promising. So, we'll see. I mean, I read someone in Congress was quoted as saying, I've been here for many years, and I've never seen this genuine bipartisan conversation about this in my life, in my whole career. So, it does feel like things might be a little different now. But yeah,

we'll see. It's also possible that nothing will change again. I know. It's hard to even talk about quite honestly. And I don't think anyone is fool enough to think that this and other gun legislation laws will completely stop something like a mass shooting or in gun violence. But it is something that can help curb these horrific acts. And these people in the Senate will have to live with themselves for the rest of their lives if they continue to sit on their hands. For sure. Agreed. You got anything else, Chuck? Nothing. Well, since Chuck said nothing, short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on myHeartRadio,

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