NRA's opposition to universal background check shows just how unreasonable it plans to be

The federal government estimates that as much as 40 percent of gun sales nationwide are between private parties. These require no federal background check. Just released from prison after finishing a sentence for second-degree murder? Or for a rape at gun point? Or for assault and battery? No problem. Just show up at a gun show with the cash and walk away with a wheelbarrow full of ammo and firearms.

But the National Rifle Association says we don't need no stinking background checks. All right, that wasn't quite the way Wayne LaPierre explained it in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday. But close enough. The million-dollar-a-year executive vice president of the NRA told the senators: 'My problem with background checks is you're never going to get criminals to go through universal background checks.'

Malarkey. And LaPierre knows it's malarkey. But that never stopped him from repeating ludicrous claims when the NRA was riding high.

In fact, according to the FBI, its National Instant Criminal Background Check System has kept 700,000 ineligible Americans from buying firearms from licensed dealers over the past decade. Some felons obviously do try to buy guns from licensed dealers. The number of denials would no doubt have been higher had some states, egged on by the NRA, not withheld gun-related criminal and mental illness data from the feds.

In California, which has the strictest state-level gun-control laws in the nation, 600,000 guns were sold in 2011. About one percent of people who tried to buy guns from a licensed dealer were rejected when background checks were run on them. That means some 6,000 people who tried to buy guns were barred because of felony convictions or mental health adjudications. And you can be certain many others did not even try to buy a gun over the counter.

How many lives did this save? How many other violent crimes did it prevent? Unknown. But it would take a lot of dishonest juggling to claim that the number was zero.

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