Liberals in politics and media love to talk about the so-called gun show loophole. You’ve heard it a thousand times from Obama, Hillary, Bernie and countless talking heads.
If these people are to be believed, anyone can waltz into a gun show and buy an automatic or semi-automatic weapon with no background check.
The Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal recently cleared up some of these myths.
In this piece, Senator Chuck Grassley writes:
10 Myths About GunsThis week, President Barack Obama announced executive actions related to guns. Here are 10 common myths about firearms.Myth No. 1: Firearm purchases at gun shows do not require a background check due to the “gun show loophole.”Facts:
- When the president and others refer to the “gun show loophole,” they imply that there are no background checks being done at gun shows. As a result, much of the public has been misinformed and are led to believe that individuals who purchase firearms at gun shows are not subject to a background check.
- In reality, there is no “gun show loophole.” If an individual wants to purchase a firearm from a licensed firearms retailer, which typically makes up the majority of vendors at gun shows, the individual must fill out the requisite federal firearms paperwork and undergo a National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) background check.
- The only firearms that are being purchased at gun shows without a background check are those being bought and sold between individuals, peer-to-peer, as opposed to buying a firearm from a gun dealer. These private sales are not at all different from selling a personal hunting rifle to the owner’s niece or nephew down the road. It is a private sale, and no background paperwork is required. The gun is private property, and the sale is made like a sale of the family’s good silver. The one difference is that the locus of a gun show is being used to make the private sale.
There’s much more.
The Daily Signal also offers this educational video:
As an entertaining follow up, Steven Crowder recently decided to test the gun show loophole.
The Blaze reported:
Comedian Goes Undercover to Test Out the ‘Gun Show Loophole’ — Watch How Gun Sellers React to RequestsWith the debate over gun control in America raging on fiercer than ever, conservative pundit and comedian Steven Crowder decided he would conduct an experiment to see if it really is as easy to purchase automatic weapons as some liberal politicians and celebrities have claimed.Crowder visited several weapon vendors at a gun show and attempted to buy a gun without a license, resulting in a hilarious failure that he recorded on a hidden camera. He then featured the undercover stunt on his web-based series Louder With Crowder.“Fully automatic?” a vendor asks Crowder. “Oh, no. I don’t have a class three license.”The video includes clips from Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hilary Clinton, as well as President Barack Obama and a handful of journalists and celebrities. In each clip, an individual mentions something relating to the wide accessibility of guns in America, particularly automatic weapons, which can reportedly be purchased even if a buyer doesn’t have a license.“So I cannot buy a fully automatic?” Crowder asks another vendor.“No. No one can really unless they have like a super-crazy license,” the vendor replies.
Here’s the video:
Featured image via YouTube.
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