We’ve agreed on something. I’m marking my calendar.

Les:

I reject your “slippery slope” type refusal to fix the gun show, err, problem/oversight/whatever, for the same reason I reject pro-choice advocates’ slippery slope objection to
“partial birth” abortion bans. You’ll often hear that “since they can’t ban abortions entirely, they’ll just ban them one procedure at a time.” But I don’t buy that. The policy should stand or fall on its own merits, whether the issue is guns, abortions, or anything else.

As Xrlq argues, there are a lot of legitimate reasons for wanting the background checks done, and it is for those reasons that some of us are uncomfortable with selective avoidance, legal or no.

As to what the criteria should be, I think that the existing requirements are generally sufficient. However, I don’t think that a gun dealer should be required, or even encouraged, to sell a gun to anybody who meets those criteria, yet whom the gun dealer reasonably believes is up to no good. Maybe he knows the guy is a crook who the cops just haven’t caught yet!

I say, no liability for a refused sale, unless it can be shown he refused the sale for a prohibited reason (e.g., race, religion, creed, etc.). No liability for a sale that is NOT refused, unless the dealer either violated a statute or had actual knowledge of the buyer’s criminal intent/disposition.

You seem to be starting from the assumption that it is generally illegal for a salesman to refuse to sell anything to anyone. It’s not. The sign behind the counter that reads “we reserve the right to refuse to serve anyone” is not just there for decoration; it’s there to remind you that there are two sides to a voluntary transaction.

Yes. Same as pretty much any other good or service.

Otherwise, the gun dealer is in a double bind. If he sells to someone who turns out to be a bad guy (but who wasn’t prohibited by law from owning a gun), then he’s responsible. But if he doesn’t sell to someone who could be a bad guy and that person is a minority, then he’s discriminating.

Gun dealers don’t have any special powers of intuition. All they can do is send in the buyer’s paperwork and see if the FBI accepts or rejects it. That’s a job for law enforcement, not retailers.

“And is your theory limited to gun sales, or does it apply to every situation where the (mis-)use of one’s discretion could produce a racist result (i.e., everything)?”

I think discretion leads to massive abuse. It’s why I’m in favor of non-discretionary handgun permits. Previously, lots of states had handgun permits, but if you weren’t part of the good old boys network you couldn’t get one (ditto if you were a minority and the sherriff was a racist).

With non-discretionary permits, anyone who meets the legal qualifications can get one, same as a driver’s license. Imagine trying to get a driver’s license and being rejected because the DMV bureaucrat used his discretion and decided you didn’t look whitebread enough.

XLRQ wrote: “If anything, the opposite would make more sense; an experienced gun dealer would be better than most at sniffing out the bad guys.”

Discretionary gun sales are a bad idea. Imagine a gun store owner refusing to sell a gun to a customer because he thinks he’s a bad guy. Now imagine the store owner is white and the customer in this case is black. Is the gun store owner being cautious or is he being racist?

I’m at a loss as to why anyone would think it should be legal for a private party to sell a gun to a stranger under any circumstances where it would be illegal for a licensed gun dealer to do so. If anything, the opposite would make more sense; an experienced gun dealer would be better than most at sniffing out the bad guys.

Tom, besides the practical points that SayUncle addressed, there’s the bigger issue of strategy. If gun advocates just give up on this isse, the anti-gun side won’t quit and go home. They’ll move on to another issue. It’s better for our side to make them use their time, money, and political capital on issues like private sales at gun shows so they can’t attack gun rights elsewhere.

The big fuss i have is twofold: 1) if you pass the law and say it’s only applicable at gun shows, people will just go outside. 2) if you pass a law that says all transfers require checks then you are in essense requiring someone to get government approval to sell their own property.

So if we started calling it the “gun show oversight” instead of the gun show loophole, everything would be peachy and you’d stop complaining about it? Somehow I doubt it.

Anyway, $10 on a gun purchase doesn’t seem like a lot to ask. If you’re not buying a gun, you don’t have to get the check done at all. If you are buying a gun at a gun show, you’d have to get the check done no matter who you were buying it from.

This is my problem with the whole thing. It seems like an eminently common sense move that hurts no one, and yet gun proponents seem to oppose it as if it were akin to confiscation. Why the big fuss? It’s because of gun proponents’ opposition to simple stuff like this that they get unfairly painted as extremists.

Centralize the background checks, do it once and buy as many guns as you want at the show with one check, for all I care.

It seems like the type of situation for which there would be an easy solution that would take away an opposition talking point without placing undue burden on anyone.

Obviously, many gun owners disagree with me on this.

Wrongo, the background check costs me $10 every time i buy a gun. And do you think that a criminal who wants a gun illegally goes to a gun show? I’d say not. As les intimated, they buy them on the streets or steal them. Or the could answer ads in the paper too, i suppose.

I mean, really, how badly would it hurt the unlicensed dealers if the show organizers sponsored a background checking booth that they could use? What would be so horribly wrong about requiring background checks for such sales? The facilities for doing so are already available (the licensed dealers are already doing them), so why not just piggyback?

I really can’t think of a good reason why you would oppose this. The cost is almost zero, and it’s very little imposition on anyone. So where’s the beef?

We should outlaw guns so they’ll be impossible to obtain, just like drugs are impossible to obtain.