Every person at every gun show I’ve ever attended clearly *lived *for that situation occurring within their beaten-fire zone. :rolleyes:
I know, right. Had my friend loaded his AR-15s and started shit, the main cause of casualties would probably be missed shots hitting people behind him as half the people in the gun show open up on him.
Apparently, there are people in this world who don’t have the skills to finish an 80% lower. The kind of liberal yuppies whowrite magazine articles, for one.
I don’t have the machining skills myself. I’ve got an engineering degree, but not in mechanical, and it takes a specialized set of skills to know what you’re doing in the metal shop.
Ital added.
“beaten-fire”?
Whoops.
This is the article.
It’s from WIRED (and is quite good, as far as I’m concerned, and nicely light on politics); so the ideas being kicked around here are spreading.
Hypothetical : you’re a bad dude. They just let you out of prison or they just diagnosed you as crazy. You can’t have a gun, legally. You want the biggest, baddest gun you can get for your quest for revenge - no black market 6 shot revolvers from that guy in the alley for you. You want a military class weapon without the fire selection switch and to fire at least 30-45 rounds between reloads.
You also don’t want your parole officer finding out.
How else could you do it? The gun show is a place you can go, and, so long as you have the cash, you’ll be able to load up.
And that’s a problem which needs to be remedied.
But it is NOT a loophole. It is the current state of firearms law. Why is this so difficult for you to understand? Your hypothetical doesn’t change the law or the answer.
Yeah, there is nothing legally wrong with buying a gun at a gun show, if you’re a normal person who would pass the background check anyway.
However, if you’re a criminal who can’t pass the background check and thus can’t buy a gun from a retail store, you can evade that law by just walking into a gun show. The selection and scope is similar to a retail store, but you don’t have to worry about background checks and can walk out with any gun you please. Thus, the “gun show loophole”.
I am fairly pro-gun but I don’t see any problem with that terminology. Yeah, it applies to any private sale as well, but the point is that from the perspective of a criminal wanting to buy a gun, a gun show might as well be a retail store. It’s not like they’re going to care about the manufacturer’s warranty…
Personally, I think it is irresponsible to sell a gun to someone you don’t know personally without a background check. I sold one or two guns here in Colorado before our background check law passed, and I always insisted on getting a background check even though it wasn’t legally required at the time.
These are exactly as traceable as any other weapon. Registered != traceable.
Move to Somalia as buying a select fire weapon in the manner you outline is basically impossible and leads to 10 years in a PMITA Federal prison regardless. How would someone sell something like that in a crowded gun show anyway?
That is precisely what a loophole is. A loophole is by definition a deficiency in the current state of a law that allows you to bypass the intent of the law without actually violating it. This is basically a textbook example of a loophole.
The current state of firearms law, which requires a background check for all retail gun sales to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals, does not require a background check for sales between private individuals. There is a loophole which criminals can exploit which bypasses the intent to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals - a criminal can just visit a gun show and buy a gun from some random “private individual” walking around. Obviously the intent of the law was to prevent criminals from getting their hands on guns, and obviously the “gun show loophole” allows them to do just that. It’s a perfect example of a loophole.
Read. “Without”. When I was a soldier, I never used burst fire - too much accuracy loss. It’s only really useful in cases when you’re operating as a squad and have someone to advance while you spray bullets to suppress, or blind firing around corners in confined spaces.
That is the definition of a loophole. However, this is not bypassing the intent of the law. Private sales not requiring a background check IS the intent of the law.
Effective area of firing. Everything you can see, aim at and hopefully hit is in your beaten zone or beaten fire area. In combat, it’s more or less the area of the engagement you can control with your weapons fire.
What is the intent of the law requiring background checks for retail purchases? Unless you think it was literally done just to fuck with law-abiding gun owners, it seems pretty obvious the intent was to make it hard for criminals to purchase guns. And it also seems obvious that the private sale exemption was intended to allow my grandfather to give me a gun, or allow me to sell a gun to my best friend, without involving the federal government.
The intent of the private sale exemption was not to provide a means for criminals to purchase guns despite the background check law, yet that is the result. Thus, the “loophole”.
Gun Shows only come around about once a month–if that. If you’re a bad guy looking for an AR-15, the best place to look is on Facebook. There will certainly be a page devoted to private gun sales in your area. Find someone selling an AR-15 or post that you are in search of one, and you can buy one that very same day. Gaurunteed.
The law was never intended to affect private firearm sales, or anyone who only make occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sell all or part of their personal collection of firearms. This has nothing to do with a grandfather giving a gun to a grandson. This law specifically was written to only require licensed dealers to perform background checks. Private sales were not “overlooked”. They were purposely exempt.
The reason they are purposely exempt is because, since there is no federal firearms records, there is absolutely no way to enforce any requirement involving the private sale of firearms.
This really isn’t a loophole. However, even if we agree that it is a loophole, it certainly is not a “Gun Show Loophole” because there is nothing special about gun shows which allow this to take place. When people use the term “gun show loophole” it puts undue attention on gun shows. So now everyone wants to do something about requiring background checks at gun shows, which completely ignores the fact that background checks are not required for private sales anywhere else! So the loophole should be called the “private sale loophole”, not the “gun show loophole”.
I also like to think that loopholes can be closed or fixed. There is no way to start requiring background checks for all private sales across the country. There are too many firearms out there that are not recorded anywhere. People like to think that the serial number means there is some sort of list or registration out there. In most parts of the country, this is not the case. A lot of attention is made to the fact that guns are made without a serial number. What does it really matter when the serial number isn’t tracked or recorded anyway? The serial number is a useless feature. The guns in my safe that have serial numbers are no more traceable to me than the ones without.
If tomorrow, the law were passed that required “Mandatory NICS checks for private sales”, who would be able to tell if I sold an AR-15 to some stranger. I suppose the stranger could be an undercover cop. So, I guess the law will have the same effect at stopping these sales as anti-prostitution laws are at stopping prostitution. No effect at all.
The intent was to exempt the occasional seller of firearms from criminal liability for accidentally selling to a felon. The law already forbids the felon from buying a firearm. By exempting private sales from the requirements of the Brady Bill, it ensures that the responsibility and liability for compliance with the law remain with the criminal himself, and that responsibility would not be assumed by or transferred to the naive or ignorant seller. Why make unintentional criminals out of people?
I know we are drifting but -------- I must be going to very different shows than most other people. At the ones I’ve attended (PA and usually multiple dealers) you fill out the same form, and the seller AFAIK makes the same call, as if you were at an actual shop. On handguns there is no doubt; its a must. And because of “implied dealership” and other laws through/enforced by the BATF most of the sellers are licensed on some level. Even between friends at the local gun club I expect to be asked for my CWP (showing I’ve passed a background check) or at least for a photocopy of my drivers license. Or both.
Buying from someone walking around? To carry something in you show photo ID and have a tag affixed. To get it out the door, the tag must still be on it and you have to match the ID you showed coming in. Can something be started on the floor and finished in the parking lot? Probably - but every dealer and most of the public would scream loud and clear to the cops/security at the door. Because it cuts into the dealers chances for a bargain and/or profit and for the gusts because they don’t want to lose their shows.
Now I’m curious just how common the shows like Absolute knows of are.
The last gun show that I went to (2011 IIRC) there was a dealer with a couple of tables of handguns talking to some customers. The conversation went like this:
Dealer- (points at table on left) These guns are from my shop. If you want to buy one of these we have to do a background check and wait 5 days, then you can pick up your gun. (points at table on right) These are my personal guns. You can buy one of these right now with no background check and walk out with it. Which are you interested in??
Customer - I’ll look at these (points to the table on right).
And as I recall there were about the same number and models of guns on each table.
People break the spoeed limit frequently. That does not mean we should abolish speed limits. It means speed limits are not 100% effective, which is true of any law. The trick is balancing the law’s deterrent effect with its negative consequences. Some non-zero level of economic activity would be lost if we closed the private sale loophole, and some people who are not otherwise criminally inclined might be inclined to break it. I don’t think those are particularly significant consequences. Do you?