When you close the non-existent gun show loophole
Gun owners beware: law enforcement officials want Los Angeles gun users to know that they can be arrested for giving or selling a gun to someone without a legal background check, especially if the gun turns up at a crime scene.
Officials announced Thursday that state and local law enforcement agencies are teaming up to launch a crackdown on illegal gun exchanges.
When you pass laws regulating gun shows, they probably end up regulating other private transactions as well.
By the way, gun user? What’s that supposed to mean.
August 17th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
California hasn’t had the private transfer exception (a more accurate label for that legal thingy-dingy one liberal media erroneously dubs the “gun show loophole” and the other liberal media erroneously dubs “the non-existent gun show loophole”) for decades, at gun shows or anywhere else, if indeed it ever did. But your greater point stands for states that do: if they’re going to require background checks for private transfers at gun shows, they might as well require them everywhere else.
August 17th, 2005 at 3:18 pm
I still contend that GSL is non-existent because a private person selling a private weapon is not a ‘dealer.’ And an ‘unlicensed dealer’ is already a criminal.
August 17th, 2005 at 4:46 pm
A “gun user” would be one who uses guns. Though some snort, and a few “shoot” up, most people smoke guns, hence the term “smoking gun.”
Sorry; I couldn’t resist.
One more: I don’t recommend taking guns orally.
August 17th, 2005 at 5:46 pm
Semantics aside, the underlying legal distinction – i.e., the federal law that requires licensees but not nonlicensees to conduct background checks – is real. Calling it the “so-called gun show loophole” rightly implies that the law exists, but isn’t really a gun show loophole. By contrast, calling it the “nonexistent gun show loophole” implies that it doesn’t exist at all. Which it does – just ask any (former) licensee who has been caught selling a gun wtihout conducting a background check.
In any event, talk of gun shows or loopholes is irrelevant in California, which has been requiring licensees to be involved in all gun sales since long before they started getting weird about gun shows.