Gun Show Gaffs and Background Checks

Gun Shows have always been the place to buy guns with neither a permit or a background check.  In fact, if you do it right, you don’t even have to buy the gun under your real name.  Pretty scary, huh?   Well, the fact is that this gaff has been going on for years.   While legislators rant and rave about gun control, creating new laws and enforcing old regulations, the gun show gaff goes on.

According to the Washington Post, New York Mayor Michale Bloomberg’s office just released a 36 page report, detailing illegal gun sales at seven gun shows in three states.   The report is entitled, appropriately enough,  “Gun Show Undercover: Report on Illegal Sales at Gun Shows.”  Undercover investigators found that they could still purchase a gun from either private collectors who licensed gun sellers even when they mentioned they could probably not pass the requisite background check.  Additionally, 74% of the gun sellers failed the integrity test.

The report called for background checks for all sales at gun shows.   It called for the ATF, Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, to better police the gun shows.   Good luck with both ideas.  More than a few gun sellers and gun owners are determined not to allow the government to interfere with possession and commerce.   They will do whatever they deem necessary to prevent the government from interjecting itself.  On the other hand, ATF is so overburden with so much on its plate, it probably lacks the resources to be effective in policing gun shows.  And, given all that is going on out there, gun shows are probably a lower priority than say massive arms trafficking in heavy weapons,  or terrorism.

Many times, at gun shows, in order to purchase a weapon, you could show the seller a business card for identification purposes.  Or just make up a name ind contact information.  These types of sales are roughly termed, “straw purchases.”    What this means, essentially, is that anyone who has the price of admission to a gun show can buy a gun.  Whether they meet the standards established by local and federal laws is irrelevant.  They can be gang members, or crazed killers, or one more gun aficionado who wants to stand outside a public hearing, strapped and intransigent.

There are two federal bills in the works designed to make background checks mandatory at gun shows.  Frankly, without the necessary enforcement of the laws and oversight of gun shows, you can pass all the laws you want, and people will still buy guns at gun shows, illegally.    This entire issue of illegal weapons at gun shows and the need for background checks has come and gone and come again.   The only tangible result may be more undercover reports.