Gun background checks increase following Obama re-election

background checks is warranted because Democrats are generally in favor of stricter gun control. “What people rationally do is that if they think there’s going to be future restrictions on particular types of guns that they can own, they’re going to buy them now while they can,” Harris says. In October, the number of background checks performed on potential gun buyers across the United States, a leading indicator for future gun sales, increased to 18.4 percent, according to data released by the FBI. After the 2008 presidential election, there was a 13.4 percent increase in background checks for gun purchases. For the first time since 1993, the number of federally licensed retail gun dealers in the United States increased in 2010 and 2011 and the the country has added 1,167 licensed retail gun dealers, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives records. The Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted 97,848 firearms background checks on Nov. 28, 2008, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. That’s the third-highest number of background checks ever recorded in a single day. The FBI conducted 12.7 million background checks during all of 2008, compared to 11.2 million the year before. As an Illinois state senator, Obama supported tighter state restrictions on firearms and a ban on all forms of semi-automatic weapons. During his first presidential campaign, he supported an effort to renew a federal ban on assault weapons, which began during the Clinton administration and expired under the Bush administration, according to the Raw Report. In 2010 Obama received a grade of “F” from the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence “for failing to push the gun restrictions he supported while campaigning,” according to the Raw Report. Although recent mass shootings brought the gun debate back to the forefront, little has actually been done about it. But during the Oct. 16 presidential debate, the moderator, CNN’s Candy Crowley, asked Obama to clarify his past statements about keeping AK-47s “out of the hands of criminals.” And the president answered with his most definitive gun control statement in years: “I also share your belief that weapons that were designed for soldiers in war theaters don’t belong on our streets,” replied Obama. “And so what I’m trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally. Part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced.”]]>