When Washington State passed I594 that required background checks

[flamin lib]

for private transfers of guns just like buying from a licensed dealer the local gunnies were all up in arms (yeah, the pun was intentional) about it saying that they wouldn't even be able to loan a gun or rent one without the hassle of a background check which was an abomination and crime against nature.

Well, maybe not so much . . .

Shooting of Firearms Trainer by NYC Woman Exposes Gun Range Loophole

http://www.thetrace.org/2015/07/background-check-vermont-gun-range/

When Veronica Lewis walked into a Vermont Target Sports last week and asked to shoot a gun, she wasn’t required to pass a background check. If she had been, the check would have turned up the native New Yorker’s lengthy criminal rap sheet and a state order that explicitly prohibits her from possessing firearms. But she wasn’t, and after finishing a gun safety course, Lewis opened fire on instructor Darryl Montague, critically wounding him, before making off with the .22-caliber handgun.
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Last summer, The Trace Editor-at-Large Adam Weinstein reported on the growing toll of shooting deaths at ranges, often committed with rented guns:

The CDC has tracked about 50 suicides at gun ranges in recent years, but that’s only from piecemeal stats in a handful of states — and it doesn’t include freewheeling Florida, where there have been a rash of range deaths, including a handful in Tampa Bay and a whopping 11 with rented guns in the Orlando area alone since 2009, prompting some range owners to shut down their rental operations.
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A woman who answered the phone at LaBerges’ Shooting Range in Charlotte, Vermont, but declined to be identified, shared her opinion about the shooting of Darryl Montague.

“They said it couldn’t have been avoided,” she says, “but it could have been because she should have been locked up.”

The whole NRA and gunner stance of no kind of control over who has access to guns is just insane. Everybody is a responsible law abiding citizen unless proven otherwise, until they're not.

[Sancho]

1. Which is, again, why a person possessing a gun should have a license!

Not just to buy - but if you want to borrow, use, visit a range, or go hunting you should have a license. The gun nuts seem to miss this one over and over.

Thanks for the link.

[flamin lib]

2. The permit to purchase being floated in Congress now would be a

good start to your proposal. 'Course it won't go anywhere in the current Republican controlled congress or perhaps even in a Democratically controlled congress cowards that they are but at least there is some discussion going on.

[Sancho]

3. Yes, a permit to purchase might open the door - so that a step in the right direction.

There needs to be a "check" at every point of use - from buying to borrowing to whatever.

Virtually all the killers were will known to family, friends, therapists, teachers, law enforcement, etc. BEFORE they committed murder or suicide. Almost all were not stopped from easy access to guns.

If you extend "carry permits" with training, permits to purchase, etc...you eventually end up with a universal permit which I call a license.

Right now, even crazies (like Zimmerman with multiple public reasons that he should not have a gun) still obtains one.

I agree, the GOP won't move on this unless there are too many voters that they can't ignore it (like confederate flags).