Mike Rowe Chimes In On Gun Control Background Checks
TV host Mike Rowe used his Facebook page as a platform to address expanded background checks which is part of President Obama’s gun control agenda.
“I’m just skeptical that expanding a broken system is the best way to keep guns away from bad guys and lunatics,” Rowe declared.
The former Dirty Jobs host on Discovery, Mike Rowe is currently starring in a similar reality show on CNN called Somebody’s Gotta Do It. You may have also recently seen him on TV as a pitchman for Ford trucks.
As the Inquisitr previously reported, in a call to stop gun violence, Obama is implementing new gun control policies, via executive order, i.e., without obtaining approval from Congress. He wants to expand the background checks for individuals who purchase guns and other weapons. In addition, he also wants more weapon sellers to acquire licenses and reduce the number of small sellers who are exempted from getting the appropriate documentation.
The right to keep and bear arms is protected by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Legal gun sales since Obama took office as president have gone through the roof, and background checks on Black Friday 2015 set an all-time record.
Despite the blue-collar emphasis of his TV presentations, Rowe used to sing with the Baltimore Opera as well as appear as an on-air host for QVC.
Rowe has long campaigned for job seekers to enter the skilled trades rather than going into student-loan hock for a four-year university degree in art history or the equivalent that provides no hands-on training for practical, good-paying careers. He started the mikeroweWorks Foundation that, among other things, awards scholarships to men and women who seek training at trade schools across the country. Rowe is on record as saying that “Many of the best opportunities that exist today require a skill, not a diploma.”
With that in mind, last month Rowe slammed presidential candidate Bernie Sanders for suggesting that college or jail are the only two options for high school graduates.
Mike Rowe previously declared that it’s fundamentally unnecessary for a viable candidate for elective office, such as former GOP presidential hopeful Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor, to possess a four-year college degree.
In a prior Facebook exchange, Mike Rowe rejected a poster’s premise that he is engaging in so-called right-wing propaganda by “harping on” the importance of a work ethic and falsely claiming that many jobless individuals actually don’t want to work.
In his essay about background checks, Rowe started out by mocking the way the White House handed out pro-gun control talking points to celebrities who would then regurgitate them on Twitter.
https://t.co/F7xhkIcwTC
I’ve just received a request from The White House!
Just kidding.#backgroundchecks pic.twitter.com/r8ItAdDRbT— The Real Mike Rowe (@mikeroweworks) January 15, 2016
He then explained that he supports background checks for gun purchases, but that the current national database is “laughingly incomplete” because it fails to register those who have been deemed mentally ill or include about 7 million individuals already convicted of felonies. Moreover, authorities prosecute less than two percent of those who try to purchase a gun illegally.
“Maybe it’s a manpower problem? Maybe it’s a resource problem? But whatever the reason, many thousands of individuals who try to purchase a gun illegally are allowed to keep on trying. Many eventually succeed, and then use that gun in the commission of a crime. This strikes me a serious problem…”
“But from what I can tell, the NRA is not the reason that so many criminals and lunatics are able to buy guns today. Nor do they appear to oppose the kind of overhaul that would give us a more effective check system…
“Regardless, we now possess the technology to update and maintain an accurate data base of felons, lunatics, gang members, terrorists, B-list celebrities, and other unsavory types that we can all agree should never be allowed to own a weapon. We also possess the ability to identify and prosecute anyone who attempts to buy a gun illegally. But if we don’t have the resources or the commitment to administer and enforce the system we have, why in the world would we want to make it bigger?”
Given the flawed background check database, “Is it any surprise that nearly every mass killer in recent memory passed a background check?,” Mike Rowe wondered.
According to a Rasmussen poll of about 1,000 respondents taken by phone in early January, approximately 60 percent of likely U.S. voters disapprove “of President Obama’s decision to go it alone with several gun control initiatives and don’t believe his actions will reduce the number of mass killings the country has experienced recently.”
Reacting to Mike Rowe’s Facebook posting about background checks, the pro-gun Bearing Arms website claimed that “If the states would provide good information to [the National Instant Criminal Background Check System], and federal prosecutors within the Department of Justice did their jobs and put gun criminals in jail, then we could quickly and easily cut into our already record-low per-capita homicide rates.”
[Photo by Mary Altaffer/AP]
