Most residents want background checks

Common-sense legislation could help keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. Just ask the residents of South Carolina.

It would be easy to assume that a politically red state such as South Carolina with a solid tradition of supporting Second Amendment rights would oppose any attempt to add to the roster of gun control laws. But surprising results of a new Winthrop Poll released last week indicate otherwise.

Eighty percent of South Carolinians polled say they would support legislation requiring that background checks be completed before a would-be gun buyer can take a firearm home. Under existing law, gun buyers can take ownership of their weapons if a federal background check has not been completed after three days.

But the poll indicates that most residents think buyers should have to wait until the check is finished, even if it takes more than three days, before they can take possession of their guns.

And the responses were roughly the same regardless of political party. Eighty percent of Republicans and 83 percent of Democrats agreed with the idea of making gun purchasers wait until their background checks were completed.

Scott Huffmon, who directs the Winthrop Poll, probably is right in surmising that most of the people polled view a required waiting period as “simply enforcing the intention of an existing law.” And, he notes, most people no doubt assumed that the background check had to be completed before the buyer could take ownership of a gun.

It also seems likely that South Carolinians are more open to measures that might prevent unqualified people from getting guns in the wake of the massacre in Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church in which nine people were shot to death, allegedly by a white supremacist who said he hoped to start a race war. Dylann Roof, the accused shooter, was able to buy a gun before a background check was complete because of the three-day waiting period rule and errors in the federal background-checking system.

If the poll genuinely reflects the feelings of four out of five South Carolina residents, that opens the door to a reasonable change in the law. In fact, some lawmakers already plan to introduce a bill making that change – as well as introducing other measures – when the Legislature reconvenes in January.

These efforts are certain to be opposed by NRA lobbyists and lawmakers who see any effort to regulate gun purchases or ownership as a potential abridgment of Second Amendment rights. It is the classic “slippery slope” argument in which they claim one change in the law could lead to a cascade of others, ending in confiscation of all citizens’ guns or some other preposterous result.

Proponents of waiving the three-day rule also are likely to hear arguments that background checks don’t catch all the people who are barred from buying a gun. But laws against speeding don’t catch all speeders, either. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to enforce speed limits.

The Winthrop Poll indicates that a significant majority of South Carolinians agree that background checks can be useful in screening buyers and that the checks should be completed rather than being subjected to an arbitrary three-day limit. That doesn’t mean they are ready to jettison the Second Amendment or require people to hand over their guns to government agents.

It might just mean they are tired of a level of gun violence that is the highest of any developed nation in the world and hope that incremental change can do some good. If that’s the case, we hope they let their elected representatives know.

This story was originally published October 7, 2015 at 4:40 PM with the headline "Most residents want background checks."