A Minnesota Senate committee took up long-standing debates over the role of government in gun ownership and background checks on Friday.
The Judiciary Committee, in the second of two days of well-attended hearings on ways to prevent gun violence, heard a rousing debate over a plan to expand background checks to private purchases.
David Chipman, a retired ATF agent who works with a national gun-control group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, testified in favor of a proposal to extend current background checks to nearly all sales of handguns and semiautomatic rifles. Currently, police say, the laws that cover licensed gun dealers are not applied to private sales, including sales made over the internet or person-to-person sales at gun shows.
"Since Newtown, over 2,000 Americans have been killed with a gun," Chipman told the committee. "Requiring background checks will prevent violent crime. Lives will be saved."
He cited the website armslist.com as a place where people seeking weapons can get them without state or federal background checks. These loopholes "render all gun laws meaningless," Chipman said.
In response, Chris Rager of the National Rifle Association said the background checks bill is a case of "chipping away at American traditions," and Joe Olson of the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance raised the possibility that universal background checks could lead to a system of gun registration.
"It is the agenda of the anti-gun forces," Olson said.
Sen. Julianne Ortman, R-Chanhassen, a member of the committee, told Chipman that the federal government has pulled back on prosecuting gun crimes. Another GOP member, Sen. Warren Limmer of Maple grove, said clubs, baseball bats and hammers are "far more dangerous, and used more often, than a gun."