For instance, if you have a legally owned firearm, or even a whole collection that you'd like to sell, you have many options. You can run an ad in the paper, list them online, or go to a gun show. At the gun show, you might offer them to various dealers to try and get the best deal you can. Since gun shows bring out buyers as well, you might also bump into a private buyer who is interested in your gun or guns. THIS is their claimed point of contention!
Their solution? Shut down gun shows! Now, if gun shows were a huge problem, it might be a small sacrifice in order to keep guns out of the wrong hands. Yet the most recent federal study shows that, of all guns involved in a crime, only 0.7 percent were purchased at a gun show. (Caroline Wolf Harlow, Firearm Use by Offenders 6 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Nov. 2001)
This fact would seem to expose an underlying political goal: to chip away at legal gun commerce by prohibiting one avenue of legal gun sales.
Even if this strategy fails to shut down the shows, they know that it will make guns more expensive overall, and therefore harder for average working people to afford the means to self-defense, by adding a FEE. Forcing all private sales to go through FFL dealers adds to the cost because they are private businesses and, as such, will want to earn a profit. Running NICS checks for free would be bad business.
Unlike other media pundits, bloggers and politicians who complain and complain and offer no solutions, I write this article bearing one!
As I see it, if we really want to address the problem -- criminals and prohibited persons from getting guns from legal sources -- then we do what works for the professionals: provide private gun sellers with a special one-time access to the NICS database. This will allow anyone selling a privately held firearm to be better assured that the sale isn't going to a "bad guy." Best of all, it covers gun sales everywhere, which means it will go far beyond the confines of gun shows to encompass ALL private sales, having a much broader impact on REAL crime without impacting the rights of law abiding firearms users.
Each side of the political debate seems intent on setting up the gun issue as "us vs. them" when in reality we all share a common enemy: violent crime. We can't win the war against it alone. We must bring together all sides who are earnest in doing something positive, NRA and "million moms" alike. I urge readers to contact their Senators and Representatives and insist that Congress allow private sellers a special per-sale access to NICS and stop playing politics with innocent lives. The longer we banter about mythical loopholes and delay action, the more tragedy we'll endure. I've had enough. How about you?
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