-By Warner Todd Huston
One of the main discussions in this ginned up, fact-free anti-gun debate coming from the Democrats and their fellow extreme leftists is that they want “universal background checks” for gun purchases. So, “background checks” are a good idea to left-wingers… but in all cases? As it happens, NO is the answer to that. Democrats don’t want universal background checks in all cases.
Jams Bovard shows us this fact quite clearly in his recent Wall Street Journal piece headlined, “Perform Criminal Background Checks at Your Peril.”
Now, Bovard isn’t talking about the gun debate with his piece. In fact, he never mentions guns even one time. Bovard, you see, is talking about background checks as a condition for employment.
As it happens, Democrats and the Obama administration are attempting to eliminate background checks for prospective employees claiming it is a “civil rights” issue.
The specific case concerns a man of Mexican origin who was denied employment as a truck driver because he had a criminal record. The record was discovered via a routine background check. Obama and his department of injustice claimed that the trucking company had no right to deny employment to the criminal saying it violated his “civil rights.”
Worse, the Obama administration essentially announced through the release of a set of new “guidelines” that the federal government will try to prosecute employers even if they are following state laws.
As far as Obama is concerned, no matter what the people want through laws written by their duly elected state officials, no background checks will be allowed.
So, what does this have to do with background checks for gun purchases?
Simply this: it is hypocritical for Obama and his extremist, left-wing comrades to claim that background checks on potential employees assumes a criminal past of these potential employees and should not, therefore, be allowed yet support background checks for potential gun buyers based on the same, exact principle.
If background checks violate a person’s civil liberties in order to gain employment, then background checks also violate a person’s civil liberties in order to enjoy their Constitutional rights.
After all, the right to a job is not in the Constitution, but the right to a firearm is.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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