Local News Crew Captures Lawful Commerce on Tape
Local TV station WATE hysterically writes about the supposed gun show loophole:
The Brady law, passed in 1993, requires licensed gun dealers to conduct a background check on every buyer. However, a loophole in the law allows people who aren’t licensed gun dealers to skip background checks on buyers.
That means you can make a purchase person to person in Tennessee without a background check.
Remember, these unlicensed dealers are you and me. People who wish to engage in lawful commerce with one another. A private sale between individuals. More:
To find out how easy it is to buy a gun without a background check, the 6 News crew went to the Mike Holloway Gun Show in Chilhowee Park. The crew’s hidden camera showed it didn’t take long to make a purchase.
Tim Miller approached some men on their way into the gun show, asking, “You guys selling? I’m looking for a handgun. You guys selling any handguns at all today?” They had several guns to offer.
One man said, “I got one for $240, two clips.” But after Miller told them, “I don’t have that much with me today” they also brought out a Smith and Wesson revolver for $225.
The hidden camera recorded the men looking to see if any signs prohibited gun purchases outside the show. But there weren’t any. “Let me see here, can I give you $220? Is that cool? Okay,” Miller asked. “Just go ahead and stick that in your pocket. And it’s yours,” the seller said.
While all licensed gun sellers, including those inside the gun show, are required to do background checks, the men outside weren’t doing anything illegal since it was a person to person sale. It’s also not illegal to sell guns outside of a gun show.
I hate to break it to you but you don’t have to go outside the show. That purchase could have occurred in the show or at your home. It has never been illegal for private citizens to sell guns to other private citizens.
August 3rd, 2004 at 5:21 pm
[…] 86″> WATE gun show loophole update |By SayUncle| In an update to the post about the WATE’s local news catching lawful commerce on ta […]
August 3rd, 2004 at 10:39 am
Do you think this guy would drive around town showing how easy it is to buy a gun on the street? Nah, too dangerous.
We should outlaw guns so they’ll be impossible to obtain, just like drugs are impossible to obtain.
August 3rd, 2004 at 12:09 pm
See, this is why I think the whole “there is no gun show loophole” line is disengenuous. It’s not like the buyer answered an ad in the paper and went to the guy’s house. The buyer went to a gun show, where he knew there would be a lot of guns for sale, many of them not requiring a background check.
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?
August 3rd, 2004 at 12:13 pm
The cost is almost zero
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.
August 3rd, 2004 at 12:19 pm
And for the record, it is still not a loophole. It’s a law that never was and a law that (if one ever passes) can never be enforced.
August 3rd, 2004 at 6:40 pm
And for the record, it is still not a loophole.
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.
August 3rd, 2004 at 9:45 pm
Actually, what you should say is something like there ought to be a law because there isn’t one. The moniker loophole implies one is skirting a law through nefarious means, which is not usually the case.
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.
August 3rd, 2004 at 10:52 pm
“So, no, I don’t think the Bushes are the blessed knights out to save America, which is approximately the view some Democrats have of the Kennedys.”
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.
August 4th, 2004 at 1:14 am
I actually agree with Tgirsh on this one, sort of. “Gun show oversight” is a misnomer but “private transfer oversight” is not. Privately transferred guns are no more or less lethal than those purchased from retailers, so why allow anyone to sell a firearm to a stranger without running a $10 background check? On the flip side, if there were anything inherently objectionable about “requiring someone to get government approval to sell their own property,” then why shouldn’t that objection apply to retailers as well?
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.
August 4th, 2004 at 8:41 am
On my post above I pasted in the wrong text. It was supposed to be Tom’s question: “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?”
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?
August 4th, 2004 at 11:31 am
Perhaps both. He’s certainly being cautious. You haven’t given enough facts to determine whehther or not he’s also being racist. What exactly is your position? That gun dealers should be required by law to sell guns to everyone they are not prohibited from selling to? 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)?
August 4th, 2004 at 1:50 pm
“What exactly is your position? That gun dealers should be required by law to sell guns to everyone they are not prohibited from selling to?”
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.
August 4th, 2004 at 2:09 pm
X: quick follow-up. If gun dealers should be on the lookout for bad guys and not sell them guns, could you suggest some criteria dealers should use to disqualify people from buying guns, based on their appearance?
August 4th, 2004 at 3:22 pm
Apples and oranges. Non-discretionary anything is a forced transaction. Forcing government to issue licenses according to certain criteria is fine. Forcing private parties to engage in transactions that ought to be voluntary, is not.
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.
August 4th, 2004 at 5:15 pm
Xrlq:
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.
June 19th, 2006 at 6:47 am
[…] Or using lame inaccurate buzzwords on a subject the reporter clearly knows nothing about. […]
November 21st, 2006 at 10:43 am
[…] It’s not all bad. I still commend Tim Miller for correcting an error. […]