Are Background Checks Unconstitutional?

One of the central tenants of “Gun Control” is the background check. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence says that, “… 92% of Americans and 74% of NRA members support background checks.” They, of course, offer no source for these percentages. They also say, “‘Universal background checks’ on all gun sales would have a clear positive impact on public safety, and is also clearly compatible with the rights of law-abiding citizens to own guns.” They call to, “Strengthen the background check system that already exists to ensure, for example, that mental health and other relevant records are in the background check system and readily available within the states.”

Dear Leader Barack Hussein Obama announced on January 23, 2013, that he would, through Executive Order (EO), take 23 actions, among them:

• “… require federal agencies to make relevant data available to the federal background-check system.”
• “Address unnecessary legal barriers … that may prevent states from making information available to the background-check system.”
• “Improve incentives for states to share information with the background- check system.”
• “Publish a letter from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to federally licensed gun dealers providing guidance on how to run background checks for private sellers.”

That all sounds, … er, great for gun control advocates. But (and there’s always a “but” with Obama), out of the other side of his mouth, Obama has called for the abolition of background checks, maintaining that they are unconstitutional. Background checks on potential employees assumes a criminal past of these potential employees and, therefore, should not be allowed. Specifically, a man of Mexican origin was denied employment as a truck driver because he had a criminal record that was discovered through a routine background check. Obama and his “Department of Justice” claimed that the trucking company had no right to deny employment to the criminal saying it violated his “civil rights.” Yet, the same Obama issued several EOs that call for or mandate background checks.

As James Bovard wrote,

“In the late 1970s, the EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] began stretching Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to sue businesses for practically any hiring practice that adversely affected minorities. In 1989, the agency sued Carolina Freight Carrier Corp. of Hollywood, Fla., for refusing to hire as a truck driver a Hispanic man who had multiple arrests and had served 18 months in prison for larceny. The EEOC argued that the only legitimate qualification for the job was the ability to operate a tractor trailer.”

“EEOC’s position that minorities should be held to lower standards is an insult to millions of honest Hispanics.”

Are we also to assume that we gun owners/potential buyers are also assumed to have a criminal past because of Obama’s call for a background check? I personally find this assumption to be highly insulting! Further, should the Obama background check be limited, as the EEOC suggest, only to the operation of a gun?

As Warner Todd Houston wrote, “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.”   [Houston’s emphasis]

This is yet another example of Obama’s and Democrats’ hypocrisy of pursuing what best suits their agenda, while ignoring the same thing that doesn’t further their agenda.

But that’s just my opinion.
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