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 ismayed
by the meager political accomplishments of Handgun Control, Inc.
(HCI), former HCI board member
Andy
McKelvey (the billionaire owner of Monster.com) has founded his
own gun-control group, which he calls "Americans for Gun Safety."
You might expect that a group called Americans for Gun Safety would
promote successful gun-safety programs, such as the NRA's Eddie
Eagle accident-prevention program, which has been lauded by the
National Safety Council.
But Americans for Gun "Safety" is doing no such thing. Despite the
group's moderate name, its list of affiliates includes many groups
that oppose any form of gun ownership by anyone other than government
employees.
For example, the affiliate Women Against Gun Violence advises, "Remove
any guns from your home." And it turns out that the top item on
the AGS agenda is exactly the same as the top item on the agenda
of firearm-prohibition groups like HCI — namely, closing the
so-called gun show "loophole." In fact, AGS
is currently running a television ad campaign claiming that "convicted
felons are buying guns at gun shows, where background checks are
not always required."
"Close the gun-show loophole!" is a now-familiar refrain. Just "common-sense"
legislation aimed at dealing with America's social ills? It might
appear that way…until one takes a closer look.
On February 21, 2001, an editorial in the Washington Times
observed that, in Maryland, gun-control groups were pushing a bill
that would prohibit the sale or display of guns on any property
owned by the Maryland National Park Planning Commission. If passed,
the editorial concluded, the law would prevent many of the annual
gun shows that take place in the state of Maryland — all of
them indubitably legal — from continuing.
Maryland already has a state-level law like the one AGS and HCI
are backing at the national level: Every sale at a gun show requires
government permission, a background check, and gun registration
— even a sale by a small-time collector who is just selling
three guns over the course of a weekend.
Yet Marylanders
Against Handgun Abuse — which AGS touts as a favored "local
gun safety group" — is attempting to end gun shows there.
In California, the laws governing gun shows and private sales are
like those in Maryland. Yet local affiliates of national anti-gun
groups have pushed hard to shut down gun shows entirely in several
California counties.
One gun-control supporter, quoted in the Washington Post,
claimed that the Maryland legislation "has to do with public safety,
especially the safety of our children". But, as the Washington
Times editorial pointed out, "what 'public safety' purpose is
served by making life harder for people without criminal records,
who pass background checks and who are buying firearms in a perfectly
lawful manner?"
Asked the Times editorial, "If gun-control advocates only
want to bar criminals from gaining access to guns — and to
'close loopholes' in the law that make it easier for crooks to get
firearms — why are they backing legislation that would prohibit
lawful gun shows on state-owned property, where all state and federal
firearms transactions procedures are followed to the letter?"
The Times provided its own answer: Proponents of the Maryland
bill "have but one object in mind — making it harder, in time
impossible, for ordinary people to purchase firearms, period."
Herewith a February 18, 2001, Washington Post report on an
effort to ban gun shows on public property in Montgomery County,
Md.: "Gun-control advocates urged the country council to take any
steps it can to reduce the availability of guns."
Does Americans for Gun Safety really believe, as its commercial
proclaims, that "in America, we have the right to own a gun"? If
so, then why is AGS promoting extremist groups which think that
trying to stop law-abiding people from buying guns is a good idea?
Despite all the disinformation spread by the gun-prohibition
| “There's
never any mention of the real 'loophole' in all these
anti-gun-show schemes, the one that enables criminals
to get whatever firearms they want, whenever they want:
the 'black market.'” |
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lobby, a gun show is really nothing more than people wishing to
sell one or more firearms to others who wish to purchase (or simply
to gaze upon) the merchandise. Most of the sellers are federally
licensed dealers displaying their wares to prospective buyers outside
their normal place of business.
Anyone engaged in the business of selling firearms is required
to be licensed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. (18
U.S.Code, sect. 923(a).) According to federal law, dealer sales
must be accompanied by an instant background check, regardless of
the premises where the transaction takes place. Federal law does
not allow any exceptions. If you are engaged in the business of
selling firearms, then you have to fill out the federal paperwork,
and call the FBI to get permission for every sale. There is no gun
show "loophole" which changes the rules.
On the other hand, people who are not engaged in the business of
selling firearms, but who sell firearms once in a while (such as
a man who sells a hunting rifle to his brother-in-law), are not
required to obtain the federal firearms license required of gun
dealers, or to call the FBI before completing the sale.
Similarly, if a gun collector dies and his widow wants to sell his
guns, she does not need a federal license, because she is just selling
inherited property and is not "engaged in the business." And if
the widow doesn't want to take out an ad in the classifieds to sell
her deceased husband's guns, it is lawful for her to rent a table
at a gun show and sell the entire collection over the weekend.
Basically, the furor over the so-called gun show "loophole" amounts
to a complaint by gun-prohibition groups that people outside the
firearms business aren't controlled by the same federal laws that
pertain to licensed firearms businessmen.
Why do law-abiding firearms owners and their organizations resist
the efforts of AGS, HCI, MAHA, and other gun-control groups to impose
federal background checks and paperwork on gun sales by private
citizens?
Peaceable gun-owners would gladly absorb the cost of the National
Instant Check System (NICS) and comply with its not-so-instant provisions
(many "instant" background checks take days, not minutes; and the
number of mistaken denials is very large) — if they thought
that those who proposed such legislation were honest in their motives,
and if they thought that the checks would make a significant dent
in the criminal misuse of firearms.
But the hidden agenda of SAFE (Colorado's main anti-gun group) was
captured on tape, with one of its leaders explaining that the group's
"gun-show" initiative (which passed last November in Colorado) was
just an "incremental" step toward the goal of requiring government
approval for all firearms transfers, even between two private individuals.
And in an anonymous gun-owner poll which ran in the December 2000
issue of Guns & Ammo magazine (the largest over-the-newsstand
gun periodical), 60% of almost 7,000 respondents disagreed with
the statement "The National Instant Check System is an effective
means for preventing criminals from obtaining firearms."
Scientific validation of the failure of NICS was provided just last
summer, when the verdict came in on the most famous gun law in America,
one whose centerpiece was the instant criminal background check:
the Brady Law, enacted in 1993. In the August 2, 2000 issue of the
Journal of the American Medical Association, pro-control
researchers Jens Ludwig and Philip Cook forthrightly concluded that
"Our analyses provide no evidence that implementation of the Brady
Act was associated with a reduction in homicide rates…[nor]
an association of the Brady Act with overall suicide rates."
The far more sophisticated research by Prof. John Lott on the effects
of the Brady Act, in the second edition of his book, More Guns,
Less Crime, is consistent with the findings of the JAMA
study. (Lott controlled for variables such as law-enforcement effectiveness
and the length of different state waiting periods, which the JAMA
authors did not). Lott found no statistically significant effect
on firearms-related deaths.
Lott also looked at other violent crimes, while the JAMA
authors studied only homicide and suicide. For most crimes, Brady
produced no statistically significant impact — except that
rape rose 3.6% and aggravated assaults against women rose 2.5%,
perhaps because the Brady waiting period delayed handgun purchases
by five government working days, even for women who needed immediate
protection against stalkers and similar threats.
Anti-gun groups use the gun-show "loophole" issue to perpetrate
their usual bait-and-switch. According to the new Colorado law pushed
by AGS, HCI, and SAFE, any time three people are present, that's
a "gun show." Thus, a "gun show" can be nothing more than a gathering
in Aunt May's home for the purpose of selling her recently deceased
husband's collection of firearms, providing the purchaser and Aunt
May's daughter are present.
Notably, anti-gun groups insist that whenever a person passes the
federal background check, the government should keep records on
the buyer. But what's the point of retaining a list of non-criminals
who are just exercising their constitutional rights?
Simple. Firearm confiscation is a lot easier when the government
has a list of every gun owner, and every gun owned. But when private
citizens are allowed to sell firearms to other private citizens
without getting government permission beforehand, there is no paper
trail. Conversely, if buyers and sellers in private firearms transfers
at a gun show are subjected to a background check, then many more
people and guns will end up on the registration list.
That firearm registration lists can be used for confiscation has
been well established right here in the U.S. Since 1966, all firearms
in New York City have been required to be registered by law. In
1991, then-Mayor David Dinkins rammed a so-called "assault-weapons"
ban through the City Council. Then, the 1966 registration law was
used by the members of the NYPD to confiscate previously registered
and lawfully owned firearms.
More recently, in June 1999, leaked documents from California Attorney
General Bill Lockyer revealed a plan to use registration lists to
confiscate "assault-weapons" — firearms that had been registered
under former Attorney General Dan Lungren. Lockyer's
office promptly denied they were drafted for any purpose other
than "for discussion."
Curiously, there's never any mention of the real "loophole" in all
these anti-gun-show schemes, the one that enables criminals to get
whatever firearms they want, whenever they want: the "black market."
Canada already does what HCI and the "Million" Mom March insist
America should do. Under a new law pushed through by the Liberal
government of Jean Chrétien, every gun owner must be licensed, and
every gun registered. Even ammunition is strictly controlled. But
according to a report in the February 13, 2001 Winnipeg Free
Press, Manitoba's former attorney general Vic Toews stated that
"the only thing the law has done is create an underground market
for ammunition, as unlicensed gun-owners shop around for shells
and bullets."
A January 4, 2001 editorial in the Saskatoon StarPhoenix
observed that "Justice Minister Anne McLellan simply brushed aside
her advisory panel's warning that the law would 'encourage a rampant
increase' in the black market for firearms… Try as it might
to convince Canadians to go along with an idiotic law, the results
were only too clear as Monday [the licensing deadline] dawned with
untold numbers of firearms owners opting for civil disobedience
rather than compliance."
Despite the obfuscation by America's anti-self-defense lobby as
to what constitutes a gun show, the answer is really simple: A gun
show is nothing more than the exercise of rights guaranteed in the
Bill of Rights: "the freedom of speech," "the right of the people
peaceably to assemble," and "the right of the people to keep and
bear Arms." Indeed, two court cases explicitly recognize the First
Amendment component of gun shows. They are Nordyke v. Santa
Clara and Atlantic City Show Promotions v. City of
Tampa.
If the censors and prohibitionists get their way and succeed in
closing gun shows, they'll discover that they've created an entirely
new kind of gun show: the kind that's now burgeoning in Canada,
and the kind they'll be powerless to regulate.
That kind of gun show will be held in the trunk of a car.
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