Virginia’s “Voluntary Background Checks” Cost State $5,769 Each

Mark Twain once said “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”  When it comes to universal background checks, Mark Twain called it right.  We've all heard gun control supporters claiming polls that 90% of Americans support mandatory universal background checks (WashPo, Reuters, MSNBC, Politifact).  The real world does not support that claim, but that doesn't stop gun control advocates from touting it to the moon and back.  Just as they do the asinine assertion that 40% of gun sales happen without a NICS check.

In the only poll that matters – the voting booth – shows a very different story last year.  In Nevada, after Bloomberg and friends spent twenty plus million dollars in a publicity campaign, not even 51% of voters supported it.  Big gun control spent $35.30 per vote cast for gun control to convince those people to support it.  While the measure did pass by the slimmest of margins, the ineptly written referendum could not be legally enforced. 

In Maine, a similar ballot initiative came up short of passage despite Bloomberg spending $8 million to promote it.

And now, news from Virginia shows us that after 77 gun shows and forty-plus thousand guns sold at those shows, records show only 52 voluntary background checks conducted.  The State of Virginia spent $300,000 to set up the voluntary program last year.  That works out to a cost to Virginia of $5,769 per voluntary background check conducted under the plan, according to my public school math.  That's not counting the $2 fee charged to the person requesting the check.  NRA-ILA has the story:

More than a year ago, the Commonwealth of Virginia enacted a law authorizing voluntary background checks for private gun sales at gun shows. Under the law, State Police officers must be available at every gun show to conduct background checks upon request for private transactions. The police may charge a “reasonable fee” for conducting these checks; in addition, approximately $300,000 in public funding was approved for the purposes of implementing this program. 

Virginians have seen little in the way of results for the expenditure of these substantial public resources.

Since the law was passed, with 77 gun shows across the state, only 54 voluntary background checks in total were requested, most of which occurred within the first six months the law was in effect. Only a single person was denied (apparently due to an outstanding felony arrest warrant) and even this came to nothing: the news reports indicate there were no criminal charges resulting from the denied purchase. In contrast, federally licensed dealers at these shows performed close to 40,000 background checks.  

 If gun control had truth and logic supporting it, why would promoters use fraud and deception to promote it?