Liberal Myth of the Gun Show Loophole Exposed
Facts vs. narrative
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 Guns
This 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 Requests
With 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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Comments
You’re preaching to the choir. The dinosaur media will say nothing and the low/no information voters will go on believing Chairman O and his lackeys.
Gun Control, only one of those words is what liberals really mean.
Like Breitbart said over and over, it’s the narrative. These are just facts.
How does this lie keep working? Because the people who want to believe it are dumb enough to believe it and too dumb to check it out for themselves. I blame 40 years of ever-increasing federal/academic influence on public education.
Republicans are not exempt. For example, many of our voters believe a draft-dodger who spent years trying to chase disabled veterans with legal vendor permits off his block and disparaged a former POW who won a Silver Star and three Bronze Stars for his service, actually cares about our veterans.
Because a significant number of people in this country really don’t want to think for themselves and will believe whatever is told to them as long as they continue to get their freebies.
Also, the education system has been corrupted for long enough now that we are reaching a critical tipping point now where there are becoming more people who were taught what to think, rather than how to think.
You forgot to mention the Distinguished Flying Cross that former POW earned for completing his final bombing run of the Vietnam War and hitting the target despite suffering severe damage. That was the mission that led to him becoming a POW in the first place. As much as I dislike that former POW, it was a ballsy airmanship on his part.
If you really want to understand the phenomenon under discussion, I recommend this short book by Princeton professor of philosophy Harry G. Frankfurt.
http://www.amazon.com/On-Bullshit-Harry-G-Frankfurt/dp/0691122946
“One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern. We have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, “we have no theory.”
Frankfurt, one of the world’s most influential moral philosophers, attempts to build such a theory here. With his characteristic combination of philosophical acuity, psychological insight, and wry humor, Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.
Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner’s capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”
The people demanding we fight the non-existent gun show loophole don’t care that there’s no such thing. Wanting to do something about the non-existent gun show loophole is value signalling. AKA liberal bullshit. It means they can loudly claim to be good people, they care about the children of Sandy Hook, and they’re better people than the monsters in the GOP and the NRA.
They don’t care that none of it is true.
We see this in all areas of liberal politics. We all know the facts about CAIR. It’s a Hamas front group. And, since Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, that means its a Muslim Brotherhood front group. It’s all meticulously laid out in the testimony and evidence presented at the Holy Land Foundation Trial. The MB shares the same jihadist ideology as ISIS and AQ, but the MB’s job is play good cop to the jihadists bad cop. And they set up front groups like CAIR to lie and obfuscate for their benefit.
It’s no mystery. And we know that CAIR only adopts the cover of a civil rights organization to advance the cause of global jihad. Again, all the facts are out there in plain sight for anyone who cares to look.
But leftist embrace the facade that they know is a facade, that CAIR is some sort of civil rights group, because they lover their self-aggrandizing bullshit more than truth. They couldn’t care less about truth. They just want to be able to claim that they’re not racist xenophobes like those conservatives. Who refuse to fall for the charade and, foolishly, think facts matter.
I don’t want to hijack the thread. Facts, you see, are conservative. So they don’t stroke leftist egos. So they reject facts and embrace bullshit. So, the gunshow loophole will never die as far as leftist are concerned.
Women who work the loophole at gun shows only make 75% as much as men for not doing the same job. If we had closed the gun show loophole Bush couldn’t have lied about WMD’s and forced us into a war to avenge his fathers failure.
Don’t forget their lack of employee-provided health care due to Bush’s obstructionism on Obamacare which caused the mortgage crisis of 2007 and 9/11 of course.
What about global warming? I though too was Bush’s fault.
You’re wrong. My wife and I, through a painful process of deduction, long ago determined that everything is my fault. Pre-determined guilt saves stress on the marriage.
Global warming therefore must have been caused by the Freon leak in my S-15 Jimmy (RIP).
I’m so sorry.
This why the internet is so valuable. It gives the weak minded a chance to read and see things that they hear on TV that are flat out wrong. We can only hope that one day they will realize that the disarmed public is known in the gangbanger world as sitting ducks. “Gun free” zones are called shooting galleries by the evil. If gun free zones worked then we could just put up signs that said “Fire free” zone or “Crime free” zone and voila! No more fire or crime! How can walking breathing human beings be this stupid?
Really, there’s no gun show loophole when “typically” the “majority” of vendors are licensed firearms dealers who must make background checks and when gun shows serve as a marketplace for sales between private gun owners? That minority of unlicensed vendors and private sales _are_ the gun show loophole.
” That minority of unlicensed vendors and private sales _are_ the gun show loophole.”
One problem with your logic sugar pants, or lack there of actually, private sales can happen anywhere, many guns are sold and traded though simple news paper classified ads. So no it isn’t a gun show loophole. It is perfectly legal private sales and it is not something new. It is something that has been allowed for years and is perfectly reasonable.
A background check is never required when buying from someone who isn’t a dealer, whether at a gun show, online, or anywhere else. And a background check is always required when buying from a dealer, whether at a gun show, online, or anywhere else. So what exactly is this “gun show loophole” or this “online loophole”?
I think that the claim that there is no gun show loophole is a bit overblown. As noted, most of the sellers at guns shows have FFLs because they are in the business of selling (or maybe even buying) guns. There are apparently some sellers (or buyers) at gun shows who do cross the line – they should have FFLs (requiring background checks), but don’t. Apparently, the ATF keeps a close eye on them, and if they see the same people selling more than a gun or two at different gun shows, they are either pushed out, pushed to get licensed, or charged with a crime. Which gets back to the reality that most of the guns sold are sold by FFLs, with the rest being sold by people not in the business of selling firearms.
That said, there very definitely is not an online loophole. If you buy a firearm online, you need to have it shipped to you at an FFL, which requires a background check. The alternative is connecting with someone online, then getting together personally, but that is no different really than if you just meet with someone personally – no background check is required because the person you are meeting with is not in the business of selling firearms.
Getting back to the “gun show loophole” – this is a bogus issue used to justify background checks for private transactions that have little, if anything, to do with gun shows. Rather, they run from including guns in every day transactions (that seems so common in NW MT where we spend half the year – I sold a Polaris a couple years ago, and probably half the offers I got included a firearm of one type or another), to loaning out a gun to your friend or family to try it out. And, visa versa. The goal seems to be to make the gun culture that so many accept as normal ever more inconvenient and expensive. Background checks require the presence of an FFL in the transaction, and that means both major inconvenience, and cost (they have to make money somehow, or they wouldn’t do it).
The alternative is connecting with someone online, then getting together personally, but that is no different really than if you just meet with someone personally – no background check is required because the person you are meeting with is not in the business of selling firearms.”
The one requirement you left out, both purchaser and seller must reside in the same state. Use the Mississippi river as a example. You live in Iowa and your friend lives a mile away in Illinois. You can not sell him a gun without going through a dealer because you are residents of different states. Even though all that separates you is a river and a line on the map.
Actually if you go to the large reputable gun shows which are usually put on by companies that specialize in putting on these shows, then they will not allow someone to sell guns that doesn’t have a FFL because it reduces their liability. It is a simple smart business decision. In fact the last Gun show I went to here had a sign that said “All firearm transactions will require a federal background check” and “No private sales of firearms allowed inside the show.”
You know, it may be because it reduces their liability, but gun shows didn’t bother with those restrictions for years. I have to wonder if it’s not really more an attempt to increase their social acceptability with the hope that they’re not going to be prohibited (or driven out of business altogether by venues not being willing to rent to them or imposing large insurance or other expensive requirements).
@jcarter50
Or perhaps they didn’t bother with those restrictions because they weren’t legally mandated and/or because the Anti-gunners such as you hadn’t yet succeeded in making people afraid of inanimate objects.
Y’know, it’s hard to consider me to be anti-gun when I own guns, two at the present time and many more in the past including a number of pistols — revolvers, semiautomatics, and black powder — and a couple of military-style semiautomatic carbines with high-capacity magazines along with other rifles and shotguns. I’m not a bit afraid of guns, though I am afraid of some people who have guns (and not _nearly_ all of them are criminals).
You complain of people being afraid of inanimate objects. I’m not and thus I’m not anti-gun in that way, either. I’m anti-some-people-with-guns and anti-people-having-absolute-and-utter-gun-freedom and anti-people-with-some-types-of-guns and anti a number of other things involving people and guns, but anti-gun? Nah, they’re inanimate objects. I’m even opposed to gun laws, since guns can’t either obey or violate the law. But laws restricting what _people_ can do in relation to guns? Well, that’s a different subject altogether.
You said, “The goal seems to be to make the gun culture that so many accept as normal ever more inconvenient and expensive.” Uh, kind of like what the anti-choice folks have done with the right to abortion? Abortion clinics must have the same standards as outpatient surgical clinics, doctors must have admitting privileges, required making and viewing of ultrasounds, and so on. The anti-gun crowd should be thanking the anti-choice crowd for the how-to lesson.
LOL, just the fact that you think the two arguments are even remotely equivalent tells me all I need to know.
This not true in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts. All private firearm sales are to be documented on a form FA-10, which requires the LTC (or FID) number of both the seller and purchaser. In order to obtain either license, one must pass a background check, ergo, there is a background check for private sales.
jcarter50, you should follow the link (I provided it earlier) to Amazon and buy the book about bullshit and bullshitterss, read it, then look in a mirror. When I said the myth of the gun show loophole will never die because it is to valuable to egotistical liberal bullshitters, I was talking about you.
There are no loopholes associated with gun shows. To comply with the law everyone has to do the exact same thing at gun shows that they have to do when selling a gun anywhere else.
There are no gray area “unlicensed vendors.” If you make all or part of your living by selling guns, you’re a vendor and need an FFL. If you’re selling guns for entirely personal reasons and live in a state where it’s legal, you don’t need a license and can sell a gun or two or liquidate an entire collection (which often happens when a gun owner dies and nobody else is interested in the guns)without bothering with background checks. ANYWHERE in the state. Including but not limited to gun shows.
Every single private sale that takes place at a gun show will take place somewhere else. Municipalities that own public venues that have banned gun shows have learned that.
That is another way to eliminate the dreaded, non-existent gun show loophole, if you think about it. If you’re capable of such a thing. Eliminate the gun show, then you eliminate the loophole. But as I said earlier, there is no loophole associated with gun shows. Every single private sale that would have taken place at a gun show takes place somewhere else. Nobody who decides to sell a gun waits for a gun show to do so.
Does it make you feel better to know the exact same private sale you’re so afraid might occur at a gun show is instead transacted at a local shooting range?
You’re right. I am stupid. When I was writing that, I said to myself, “You know, I really ought to go on and say that ‘loophole’ is being used here as a term of art to mean ‘an area that the law does not cover’, not in the meaning of ‘legal loophole.'” Then I said to myself, “Nah, no one is so … let’s say bold as to take that quibbling-over-terms position.” I was wrong.
You say, “There are no gray area ‘unlicensed vendors.’ If you make all or part of your living by selling guns, you’re a vendor and need an FFL.” Yep, and that’s just exactly what the new guidance on who does and doesn’t need a license is intended to make clear; I’m glad that you think it’s a good idea.
Incidentally, I used to go to gun shows frequently and, indeed, buy guns there. There were certainly vendors there who were not licensed dealers and some of them could certainly have been wholly legal. When my relative died with a large collection of guns, I certainly considered taking a table at the nearest gun show to sell his guns as the executor of his estate, which would have been wholly legal (but chose instead to sell them through a licensed dealer so, in part, the buyers would have to go through background checks).
And I concur that the private sale part of the loophole will not be closed by simply preventing private sales at gun shows, though my experience is that they are certainly a thriving marketplace for such sales. If that marketplace is shut down, others will spring up. Though the definition of “gun show” may be broadened to include many of those marketplaces as well: how about this definition, “A ‘gun show’ includes any physical location regularly used as, or advertised, promoted, or publicized as, a venue for the sale, trade, barter, or other transfer for value of firearms between unlicensed persons.” That ought to cover most of them, including your gun range, don’t you think?
jcarter50, you really should have just stopped after typing the first two short sentences of that comment which contained the only five words that needed to be said. Instead you kept going on and providing further evidence. For instance:
“You say, ‘There are no gray area ‘unlicensed vendors.’ If you make all or part of your living by selling guns, you’re a vendor and need an FFL.’ Yep, and that’s just exactly what the new guidance on who does and doesn’t need a license is intended to make clear; I’m glad that you think it’s a good idea.”
No. That’s what the existing statute said before Obama was elected to the Illinois legislature. It’s what it says now.
“18 U.S. Code Chapter 44 – FIREARMS
§ 921 – Definitions
(a) As used in this chapter—
(21) The term “engaged in the business” means—
(C) as applied to a dealer in firearms, as defined in section 921(a)(11)(A), a person who devotes time, attention, and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms, but such term shall not include a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms;
(22) The term “with the principal objective of livelihood and profit” means that the intent underlying the sale or disposition of firearms is predominantly one of obtaining livelihood and pecuniary gain, as opposed to other intents, such as improving or liquidating a personal firearms collection:
Provided
, That proof of profit shall not be required as to a person who engages in the regular and repetitive purchase and disposition of firearms for criminal purposes or terrorism. For purposes of this paragraph, the term “terrorism” means…”
Who is and who is not a dealer who requires an FFL is defined by law. Obama can’t change these definitions, but idiots don’t know that. This “guidance” does nothing except fool the fools.
You really need to buy that book about bullshit I recommended earlier. You do also own a mirror, right? My comments contain certain key words which should cue you to look into that mirror and say, “Yup, that’s who he’s talking about.”
So according to you, I should never be able to sell my personal property. Once I buy a gun, It’s mine forever.
Oops. That reply was supposed to be for JCarter50. I got on the wrong line.
And just where, exactly, did I say that?
What about the liberal myth about that malignant moron standing behind the presidential podium?
Turns out that isn’t a myth, it is a current fact.