But there isn’t; there’s a law that says that commercial gun dealers have to perform a background check to sell you a gun. There’s nothing that says I can’t buy a gun without a background check.
Damn that mortgage deduction loophole!
It’s the intent of the law, not a loophole. Unless you are costing loopholes to be any aspect of the law you don’t approve of.
Laws don’t “allow” things. They prohibit things. The baseline state in a (mostly) free country is that everything is legal, unless prohibited by law.
That being said, “private sale loophole” is more honest than “gun show loophole.”
But the use of the word “loophole” is meant to imply some sort of deceit, misuse, or end-around.
I much prefer “following the law”. I try to follow all laws, myself. I consider myself to be generally “law-abiding” rather than “loophole-exploiting.”
Depending on what the rules and warnings are, that sounds good. But if these are warnings against things that can cause people to be accidentally shot, that’s not enough. Most people who are shot are shot on purpose.
I’d hope to see rotating summaries of public health research showing that, for example, firearms ownership is associated with a higher gunshot death rate for the owner’s children.
If the manufacturers put on strong enough voluntary warnings, I’d be fine with skipping new laws. But I fear that the kind of warnings that could cause actual voluntary reduction in firearms ownership rates would cause gun culture backlash. So laws may be needed.
Australian cigarette packet graphics might inspire other ideas.
But isn’t the intent of background checks to help ensure that those that are ineligible to purchase guns can’t? ISTM that all the current law says is “Hey felons, you can’t buy from a dealer. Go find a private seller.”
How is this any different, in practice?
I guess you could make a case that if I went to a gun shop as a prohibited person, and he sold me a gun without background check, only he could be prosecuted, not me.
But as I’ve said in my previous pots, the odds of me being prosecuted even if he did the check are roughly 77 in 77,000. So, so what?
Yeah, kind of. But there are still roughly 77,000 people a year that try it (buying illegally from a dealer), and could go to jail for five years. And we prosecute essentially none of them.
(PhillyGuy says that’s because it’s too expensive. See above.)
A universal background check would be better. Some gun owners support this. But there are problems:
-
The devil is in the details. And there are kinds of practical details to work out.
-
It can’t work without registration, I think. Or how else could you prove that the check was done?
-
You think enforcing the laws we already have is expensive? Whoa. Wait until you see the bill for this.
-
Gun controllers have a proven history of incrementalism. Even this push is evidence. You wanted background checks for dealer purchases. We gave you that. Now you want me to pay for another check if I sell my gun to my neighbor? When does this stop? Sadly, for most gun controllers, it only stops when all guns are flat-out banned. And we know this. The gun-controllers can’t be trusted.*
*That’s why I have more respect for the guys that say “ban them all” than I do for the ones that say “we need reasonable controls.” The first group is honest, but wrong. The second group (mostly) are both deceitful and wrong.
It’s 3 fake steps to a total confiscation. That’s a rational analysis, then.
No. The intent of the NICS check is to help ensure that those that are prohibited to purchase from an FFL can’t. The law is clearly written.
That’s a better answer than mine.
The usual pattern:
Gun controllers: Waaaahhh! This is terrible! We need a law!
Rational people: Uuuhhh, that won’t work like you hope.
Gun controllers: Waaaahhh! Statistics! Gun deaths! England! The NRA! Waaaaahhh!
(Law gets passed. Doesn’t work.)
Gun controllers: Waaaahhh! This is terrible! It’s a loophole! We need another law!
Rational people: Uuuhhh, that won’t work either. You’re only making things worse, and annoying us.
Rational people: Oh, by the way. We liberalized concealed carry in 47 states while you were whining, and let your assault weapons ban expire. Homicide rates dropped like a rock.
Gun controllers: Waaaahhh!
I don’t question the clarity of the law, I question its usefulness. We don’t tell underage drinkers that they can’t buy liquor from retailers but if they want to buy from the friend’s parents, that’s cool.
Lots of people questioned its usefulness when it was passed. I should know. I was there.
These gun control schemes sound good on paper, to some, but never work in actual practice. (Kind of like communism.) See my above post.
If you want to see something that may have worked, research the correlation between the U.S. states’ relaxation of concealed carry laws, and the U.S. homicide rate.
Well earlier you questioned the law’s intent so I wasn’t sure of your evaluation of its clarity.
The law is useful in its application in that it largely does what it is intended to do.
Your analogy is not on point. First of all alcohol is not a fundamental enumerated right. Second, we tell vendors it’s unlawful to sell to underage purchasers. We tell others they cannot furnish underage folks with alcohol. What we don’t do is tell people that they can’t buy an old bottle of wine from their neighbor and if they want to they have to both go down to a bar so the bartender can check their ID’S first, and then if the bartender checks it, he then gets to hold onto it for 10 days before releasing it to the buyer.
…
What about the check resulting in issuance of a ‘title’ card (in duplicate) with owner name, weapon serial and a unique identifier (Chip based to prevent counterfeiting)?
The government database does not contain your information, just the identifier and serial. In other words, a title (registration document) without a registry of owner names.
Sell or transfer the weapon, FFL will verify the title and weapon serial against your card, buyer gets a background check and new title is issued. Anyone caught possessing a weapon without a valid title, no longer owns that weapon (at a minimum).
Lose both titles? Better pass another background check and have a receipt, bill of sale etc. with your name and the serial on it. Otherwise, not a responsible owner.
Up until a few years ago CA did not require registry of long guns and yet still had background checks on PPT.
You’d have to define “works” in this context. It worked fine in that it existed.
Ok, fine, it’s not a loophole, the whole law is useless shit, neutered into irrelevance by our NRA overlords. Thanks, NRA for ensuring that criminals have a vibrant market in which to purchase guns to use against law abiding citizens.
So…black market dealers who sell to criminals, who are by definition scofflaws, will comply with your tough, new background check requirement? Why are they going to do that?
Isn’t that like saying that children of people who buy fireworks have higher rates of fireworks injuries and deaths? Sort of by definition? That’s why health studies of firearms in the home have been opposed: worries about “lies, damn lies, and statistics”.
More precisely, the law is intended to put the burden of proof on firearms dealers, so they will be disincentivized to sell guns indiscriminately in the first place, and make prosecution of those who do easier. So there won’t be sleazebag gun dealers doing hundreds or thousands of wink-wink-nudge-nudge sales.
Secondly, setting conditions on a federal dealer license is much easier, in terms of both the explicit authority to do so and with minimum potential backlash, than passing a law applying to the entire general public. That’s how it was sold in the first place: “No no, we’re not proposing banning private guns sales; we’re just regulating commercial dealers, that’s all!” And yet by habit this has been transmogrified into the general perception that buying a gun without undergoing a background check is inherently illicit. Exactly the sort of slippery slope gun owners fear.