Tschmath, I probably used to be a bigger gun control freak than you are... I absolutely wanted guns out of our society, but then I realized the impossibility of that idea... I don't know what the answers are... Expanding background checks could be part of the solution, the government should be able to put a stop to some guy purchasing 50 Bushmasters in a single year as this is obviously a straw purchaser yet we saw something like this in the Fast and Furious fiasco... Gun shows also present a problem where a large percentage of the transactions are done by private individuals and we can reasonably suspect that this is one of the ways that criminals are able to purchase guns... Were I a gun owner I would have some expectation of being able to give my guns to family members or friends without going through the process of background checks, but maybe that I am not being reasonable, maybe we should have to go through the process if it would really keep more people safe, I do question how far the government will go in keeping guns out of the hands of different people... say someone who in a heated moment became involved in a pushing match who other than that one heated moment has had no other incident in his life and gets charged with assault and battery.... maybe the other person actually started the altercation and even though no punches were thrown does this person have to give up his guns or his right to own guns? I don't pretend to know the answers Tschmath, but I do tend to believe that the government tends to over fix things even though those fixes often don't achieve the original intent of the legislation when the bill started its way through some committee somewhere... It also seems to me that we spend a lot of time debating legislation that we know nothing about.... I don't think that we can even evaluate the legislation that is being currently considered as it is not yet written... somehow I think that there will be things found in the eventual bill that nobody is talking about.

You may not like this, but more and more I see our country becoming a more dangerous place, and although I have never been a gun owner that does not mean that I never will be and I do not want our government between me and my right to defend my home and personal safety... I was raised with the belief that I own nothing that is worth a human life... but it seems to me the bad guys these days are not so respectful of their victims lives....

I have no answers Tschmath, only questions.

I sit here and read these threads and the comments from folks like tschmath who hate people saying to enforce existing gun laws and to offer a suggestion for something different. Ok, but first a question, do you realize that a background check would have done nothing in the case of the Newtown shootings? Adam Lanza did not own the guns he used, he took them after killing his mother. All of the checks in the world would not have helped since his mother protected him and he flew under the radar. BTW, his mother passed all of the Conn. checks that were some of the most restrictive in the country at the time. You want a law that will make a difference? Try a 10 or 15 year mandatory prison sentence for ANYONE convicted of a crime using a gun. No pleas, probation, nothing. Do the crime and you are gone, goodby. Here in Md we now have probably the most restrictive AW ban in the country. Will it help? Probably not, it only further takes away the rights of law abiding citizens. You can't legislate complete safety, there is no stopping the random acts of a madman bent on getting his moment of fame from the media.