Gun-show loophole more rhetoric than reality
The following is a Counterpoint:
By Charles Jones
The purported "gun show loophole" hawked by anti-gun media and organizations does not, in reality, exist. But the phrase makes for good anti-gun press.
In reality, two types of sellers attend gun shows. Firearms dealers sell firearms as a business; they must have a federal license. Private individuals, who are not dealers, take firearms to gun shows to sell them much as individuals, not dealers, take antiques to antiques show to sell them.
Dealers must conduct background checks regardless of whether they sell firearms in their stores or at gun shows. Private sellers, however, can sell firearms at gun shows or anywhere else without conducting a check.
While sales by individuals are called "gun show loophole" sales, the term is misleading because private sellers can legally sell firearms anywhere (homes, offices, etc.) without conducting checks. Federal law does not yet prohibit private citizens from selling firearms to other private citizens without performing a background check. What gun-control advocates want, and what I suspect the NRA wants, are federal or state laws requiring anyone selling a firearm to conduct background checks, which would mean that private sellers would have to sell firearms via dealers who can conduct checks. I am no fan of the NRA and suspect that, since it represents dealers as well as individuals, dealers want such laws so that they can charge private sellers fees, as much as $30, to conduct checks.
Absent a rapidly approaching police state, we simply cannot ensure that everyone who buys a potentially dangerous product (gun, alcohol, knife, vehicle, etc.) has no mental health problems. The protesters in Virginia, recently prone on the ground in a "die-in" to protest the nonexistent "gun show loophole," are in a world of fantasy and ignorance since "gun show loophole" sounds and feels menacing, notwithstanding the facts or the law of firearms transactions.
The writer lives in Norfolk, Va., and is a Greensboro native.
Comments (3)
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From
http://www.jus.state.nc.us/NCJA/ncfirearmslaws.pdf
North Carolina General Statute § 14-402 does not
make any exception for the receipt or purchase of a
handgun from a private individual as opposed to a
firearms dealer. Therefore, a pistol purchase or North
Carolina concealed carry permit is necessary before the
transfer of any handgun can take place.
Posted on January 31, 2008 6:37 AM
As for "Gun Shows", why don't we just let people sell their remaining prescriptions to people at a "Drug Show" so people did not have to go to a pharmacy or so the nefarious could fly under the radar????
MAKES ABOUT AS MUCH SENSE.
Ellis, your point on NC is good point. Not true in every state and is not tightly enforced in this state.
Posted on January 31, 2008 9:36 AM
Well it seems to me that the Senate is blind. A background check on every firearm transaction is key.
Posted on January 31, 2008 10:24 AM