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After reading Bob Aldridge’s op-ed column, “Debunking myths about a gun-show loophole” (July 10), I wanted to give a different perspective on gun sales and criminal background checks in this country.
Aldridge is wrong. The gun show loophole is not a myth but a tragic fact – one that the killers at Columbine High School exploited 10 years ago before they murdered 12 of their classmates and teachers with the weapons they obtained through unlicensed sellers, without background checks, at a gun show.
This legal loophole illustrates how easy it is for dangerous people to get guns in America, and it provides the clearest example of our country’s near-total lack of a gun violence prevention safety net.
Let me first offer some background. Contrary to Aldridge’s repetition of boilerplate and unexplained gun lobby claims about “20,000 gun laws” in America, there are effectively only three laws restricting access to guns – just three – at the federal level:
•The National Firearms Act of 1934, which heavily restricts the sale and ownership of fully automatic weapons such as machine guns.
•The Gun Control Act of 1968, which lists categories of prohibited gun purchasers, including felons and the dangerously mentally ill (and which was amended in 1996 to include domestic abusers).
•The 1993 Brady Law, which strengthens the 1968 Gun Control Act by requiring federally licensed gun dealers to run criminal background checks on gun buyers.
The gun show loophole, then, is part of a gap in the Brady Law. It allows millions of gun sales without criminal background checks to be conducted by unlicensed gun sellers, often at gun shows. These gun shows provide the venue, the publicity and the customers for private gun sellers, giving many the opportunity to do this week after week at gun shows around the country. Unlicensed sales are estimated to account for up to 40 percent of all gun transactions in America.
Aldridge claims that just a tiny percentage of guns used in crime are bought by criminals at gun shows, but what he fails to explain is how the criminal gun market works. Illegal guns don’t grow on trees. Firearms almost always begin in the legal market. The question is, how are guns diverted from legal sellers to illegal buyers? As the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco Firearms and Explosives reports, “Gun shows and flea markets are a major venue for illegal trafficking.”
Why do illegal gun traffickers buy and sell guns at gun shows? As the infamous bank robber Willie Sutton might have said, “Because that’s where the guns are.” In fact, according to one ATF report, “(F)elons buying or selling firearms were involved in more than 46 percent of the investigations involving gun shows.”
Aldridge argues against requiring criminal background checks for gun sales by unlicensed sellers, but what he is really advocating for are secret gun sales. Millions of firearms transactions a year hidden from public view, blocking police from doing their job of enforcing the laws on the books. If there is no law requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales, then police cannot prevent thousands of felons, fugitives, wife-beaters and the dangerously mentally ill from easily getting firearms. It’s that simple.
Since the Brady Law took effect in 1994, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has conducted more than 100 million criminal background checks. More than 1.6 million of those have been blocked as dangerous gun sales. Clearly, under the Brady Law, the gun industry and the Second Amendment are doing just fine – even as approximately 100,000 dangerous gun sales are blocked every year.
That said, we must do better. The gun show loophole in the Brady Law is very real, and it puts American families at risk. More than 80 percent of Americans believe that it’s just common sense to make it harder for dangerous people to get firearms by requiring criminal background checks for all gun sales at gun shows. President Obama believes that, too. He and Congress should back legislation to close the gun-show loophole immediately.
