LANSING, Mich. — A package of gun reform bills continues to move forward in the Michigan legislature.
Gun sellers like Joel Fulton, who owns Freedom Firearms in Battle Creek, say the background check expansion doesn’t do much.
“Frankly, universal background checks for almost 100 years in Michigan have been proven not to work, because if they did work, Detroit never would have been the murder capital of the world," said Fulton.
Michigan has had a background check law on the books for handguns since the 1920s– this new legislation would expand background checks to long guns.
“So now they want to apply something that doesn't work on handguns to long guns, and therefore it's nothing to do with guns and everything to do with gun control," he said.
State Rep. Jaime Churches says this legislation would establish best practices. “It's just making sure that we are setting up best practices for requiring background checks for gun purchases," she said. "This is best practice already for a lot of firearm dealers. But we want to make this happen always.”
Churches acknowledges that, if passed, this new law might mean more work for gun sellers. “There probably are firearm establishments that go out of their way to ensure that they're selling to consumers and doing everything that they can to ensure safety and transparency. But then there are also that that aren't," she said. "So this is just making something a standard best practice”
But Fulton believes this law wouldn't do much good. “Long guns have only been used traditionally in 4% of violent crimes. Handguns are what are traditionally used in violent crimes by criminals. So the most you're going to be able to reduce crime by is 4% by doing anything to try and make it safer, which you won't.”
Now Fox 47 wasn’t able to corroborate that 4% figure that Fulton mentioned, but the Bureau of Justice has found that themajority of criminals use firearms that are easily concealed– not typically long guns.
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