Every day for the past 22 years, California’s background checks have stopped about a dozen felons, mentally ill people and others from buying guns.

When prospective gun buyers stride into California gun stores such as Ron Kennedy’s Canyon Sports in Martinez, they must swipe their driver’s licenses or state IDs. That sets off a review process that runs their names not only through the same FBI criminal database other states use but also almost 20 other sources, from mental health records to DMV data. It’s a check more rigorous than any other state’s.

California is also one of only two states — Rhode Island is the other — requiring such checks not only for purchases from licensed gun dealers, but also for all purchases at gun shows, or even if you’re just buying a gun from a neighbor.

For those reasons, California’s universal background check system is being held up by gun control advocates as a model for the rest of the country. Yet in the emotionally charged national debate that has ensued since December’s massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school, whether implementing such a system nationwide would prevent similar tragedies and gun crimes remains a bitter point of contention.

Some statistics are clear: Only 1 percent of California’s background checks lead to denials, so the system barely reduces the number of guns out there. But the national denial rate is 0.6 percent, so California’s checks are obviously much better at preventing people who can’t legally own guns from buying them.

“You have to assume that if you stop one person who would otherwise take that gun and kill people, it’s been a success,” said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Napa, chairman of the House Democrats’ gun violence task force.

But many gun-rights advocates fear universal background checks are nothing more than a prelude to universal registration and perhaps even confiscation.

Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president and CEO of the National Rifle Association, warned during a recent speech in Reno that President Barack Obama “wants to put every private, personal firearms transaction right under the thumb of the federal government.”

At a Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, LaPierre sparred with Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, on the background check issue after LaPierre argued that more checks would simply force law-abiding citizens to pay more fees for the right to own a gun.

Other statistics can be used to support either side of the argument. Consider:

In 2011, California’s rates of killings, robberies and assaults involving firearms were all higher than the national rates. But California had lower rates of armed robberies and armed assaults that year than Arizona or Nevada, which conduct less stringent background checks for gun store sales and no checks at all for gun show or private, person-to-person sales.