Charles, don’t feel bad that you haven’t figured out exactly what the media and anti-gun politicians mean by the term, “gun show loophole.”
Like the term, “assault weapon,”it’s a made-up term that has less to do with reality, and more to do with scaring people, or pretending to be tough on crime. Here’s the reality. In most jurisdictions, it’s legal for a father to sell a fire- arm to a son, or a neighbor to sell a firearm to a neighbor, without going through the same background check that’s conducted when purchasing a firearm from a licensed dealer. Officially, these transactions are called “private sales.” Private sales are legal, and are not the same thing as “straw sales” which occur when a person who is not barred from owning a firearm, buys a gun on behalf of someone who is legally barred from owning a firearm.
In other words, sales that occur between gang members out of car trunks in back alleys are illegal sales, not “private sales.” Where this ties back to gun shows (or at least, where the anti-gun crowd tries to tie it back to gun shows) is that in addition to the thousands of transactions conducted by licensed dealers at shows, private transactions can also occur between visitors, no differently than if the transaction had occurred in the living room or garage of the individuals conducting the transaction.
But here’s the problem. The anti-gunners aren’t just looking at ending private sales at gun shows, they’re looking at ending the practice altogether. That is not a logical step to reduce crime. Almost no crime can be traced to guns bought and sold through private sales, whether the private sale was conducted at a gun show, a farm field, or a front porch.
Gang violence is overwhelmingly responsible for the largest number of firearm deaths in the United States, and those gang members are not purchasing their guns at gun shows (the idea itself is laughable, considering these shows are literally crawling with ATF agents and state and local law enforcement). Instead, the majority of those transactions occur as straw purchases, or through illegal sales of stolen guns.
The renewed call for an end to the so called “gun show loophole” has been driven by the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Connecticut, but of course, those guns didn’t come into the possession of Adam Lanza because of a private sale at a gun show. Ending private sales would not have prevented Sandy Hook, but it will do one thing, and one thing only. It will set the U.S. on the path of universal gun registration, which for the U.K. and Australia, was the beginning of the end for responsibly armed citizens.
