gun show loophole

More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun-Control Laws
by John R. Lott
Published 15 May 2010

Other gun laws besides right-to-carry laws might also affect crime, and the estimates therefore take into account one-gun-a-month regulations, assault weapons bans (whether there are state bans when the federal ban is not enforced), background checks on the private transfer of guns (essentially “closing” the so-called gun show loophole), the Castle Doctrine (which absolves people of having to retreat when they are being threatened with deadly force), one-gun-a-month rules, and bans on relatively inexpensive guns (so-called Saturday night specials). These gun laws may be important for explaining changes in crime rates. But, perhaps more important, these other gun-control laws appear likely to be hot topics in the near future. Shortly after the November 2008 election, Barack Obama’s transition Web site noted that Obama and Joe Biden “support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country A D E C A D E L AT E R | 255 childproof.

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Presumably if assault weapons are to be used in committing any particular crime, they will be used for murder and robbery, but the data appear more supportive of an adverse effect of assault weapons bans on murder and robbery rates. Gun Show Regulations Despite the impression created by the term gun show “loophole,” there are no different rules for buying a gun at a gun show than anywhere else.202 Gun-control groups, such as Third Way (formerly Americans for Gun Safety) identify eighteen states that have closed the loophole, but interestingly, prior to 2000, only three of these states had laws that even mentioned gun shows. So how can a state close a gun show loophole if the laws didn’t even mention the term “gun show”? The issue is really private handgun transfers. What usually constitutes “closing the loophole” is mandating background checks for private transfers of handguns.

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They find that gun shows modestly reduce homicides and have no impact on suicides within twenty-five miles of the gun show.207 If their result is correct, the reduction in gun shows that I find from closing the gun show loophole may explain why closing the loophole could increase murder and robbery rates. Closing down gun shows is more likely to deprive law-abiding citizens of a relatively inexpensive source of guns than to prevent criminals from getting guns. The results in table 10.12 imply little impact from closing the gun show loophole. While murder and robbery rates appear to rise, neither increase is statistically significant. Nor is the change in aggravated assaults significant.

Columbine
by Dave Cullen
Published 3 Mar 2010

Tom took a one-year leave of absence to serve as chief lobbyist for SAFE Colorado (Sane Alternatives to the Firearms Epidemic). They supported several bills in the Colorado legislature to limit access to guns for minors and criminals. Prospects looked good, especially for the flagship proposal to close the gun-show loophole. It was narrowly defeated in February. A similar measure bogged down in Congress. So a week before the anniversary, President Clinton returned to Denver to encourage survivors and support SAFE’s new strategy: to pass the same measure in Colorado with a ballot initiative. Colorado Republican leaders rebuked the president and refused to appear with him.

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May 2, the governor and attorney general—the state’s most prominent Republican and Democrat—put the first two signatures on the petition for the Colorado ballot initiative. It required 62,438 signatures. They gathered nearly twice that many. The measure would pass by a two-to-one margin. The gun show loophole was closed in Colorado. It was defeated in Congress. No significant national gun-control legislation was enacted in response to Columbine. The season ended well. On May 20, the second class of survivors graduated. Nine of the injured crossed the stage, two in wheelchairs. Patrick Ireland limped to the podium to give the valedictory address.

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Associated Press, Washington, June 14, 2007. Bortnick, Barry. “Passed/Amendment 22: Background Checks—Gun Shows.” (Colorado Springs)Gazette, November 8, 2000. “Colorado Kills Gun Laws.” Report by Vince Gonzales. CBS News, February 17, 2000. Ferullo, Michael. “Clinton Implores Colorado Voters to Take Action on Gun Show Loophole.” CNN.com, April 12, 2000. Hahn, Robert A., Oleg O. Bilukha, Alex Crosby, Mindy Thompson Fullilove, Akiva Liberman, Eve K. Moscicki, Susan Snyder, Farris Tuma, and Peter Briss. “First Reports Evaluating the Effectiveness of Strategies for Preventing Violence: Firearms Laws: Findings from the Task Force on Community Preventive Services.”

Against the Web: A Cosmopolitan Answer to the New Right
by Michael Brooks
Published 23 Apr 2020

It’s probably Harris, who genuinely does part ways with the Limbaughs and Hannities of the world on a number of core issues, who marks the difference between the IDW and the more old-fashioned right. The Stanford- and UCLA-educated neuroscientist is a warmonger and an apologist for the status quo in many ways I’ll explore as the book goes on, but he has conventionally liberal views on domestic policy issues ranging from abortion to closing the gun show loophole. He supported Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump in the 2016 election. And where Ben Shapiro naively believes that God Himself shares his attitudes toward women and Palestinians, Harris is fiercely secular. Long before there was an Intellectual Dark Web, Harris belonged to a group of intellectuals who collectively branded themselves The New Atheists.

Parkland: Birth of a Movement
by Dave Cullen
Published 12 Feb 2019

Finally, Newtown was such a horror that gun safety advocates were sure something substantial would pass. No. That defeat felt like the death knell of hope. Polls indicated huge majorities favoring several gun reforms, but most of us went silent about them. Even raising the possibility of closing the gun show loophole or fixing the background-check system drew eye rolls and jabs about political naivete. A new assault weapons ban, or limiting large-capacity magazines, ideas heavily supported by the public, drew jeers. The NRA kept introducing new bills to weaken gun laws, and they were passing in legislatures around the country.

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He soldiered on alone, later joined by hundreds affected by subsequent tragedies—and in nineteen years, he’s learned a thing or two. Though most of the crowd came out to see the Parkland kids, it was Tom Mauser’s name on so many lips as the audience drifted out. Mauser had lamented that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had gotten three of their four guns through the so-called gun show loophole. For a year, legislators failed to close that loophole, even in Colorado in the wake of the tragedy. Finally Mauser helped lead an effort to put it on the state ballot. It passed by 40 points. “If you put something reasonable in front of people, they will support it,” he said. He also cautioned that the NRA had been winning with a narrative suggesting that cities like Chicago with the most restrictive gun laws suffer the worst gun violence.

The Way of the Gun: A Bloody Journey Into the World of Firearms
by Iain Overton
Published 15 Apr 2015

There was Ali Boumelhem, a member of Hezbollah, who was imprisoned for trying to smuggle US guns back to Lebanon. He had been buying weapons at gun shows in Michigan.66 Or Conor Claxton of the IRA, who had gone to South Florida gun shows to buy guns to smuggle back into Northern Ireland.67 Even an Al Qaeda spokesman has remarked on the gun show loophole, encouraging American jihadists to ‘go down to a gun show at the local convention center and come away with a fully automatic assault rifle, without a background check, and most likely without having to show an identification card. So what are you waiting for?’68 The concern of Americans on the Mexican border, though, was not about what was going south.

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And looking at crimes solely within 25 miles of a gun show ignores findings about the geography of illegal gun markets; roughly two-thirds of gun crimes are from firearms purchased out of state or far away from the scene of the deed. 66. http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2001-12-13-nceditf.htm 67. http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/13/us/nation-challenged-gun-control-gun-foes-use-terror-issue-push-for-stricter-laws.html 68. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/closing-the-terror-gap-and-the-gun-show-loophole/2011/06/06/AGTKubKH_story.html. Perhaps the most notable non-international case, though, was the Columbine High School massacre. The two perpetrators bought two shotguns and a Hi-Point semi-automatic from a private seller for cash at the Tanner Gun Show in Adams County, Colorado. No questions were asked, and no paperwork was filled out.

Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism
by Jeffrey Toobin
Published 1 May 2023

Some events featured thousands of distributors and tens of thousands of attendees. At these events, licensed gun dealers—commercial establishments—had to record and report all sales, but private dealers like McVeigh could buy and sell without any reporting to the government. (This was known as the “gun show loophole”; it still exists.) The exhibitors sold new, used, and antique firearms, ammunition, shooting supplies, knives, scopes, clips, reloading supplies, holsters, carry cases, hunting gear, concealment products, gun apparel, knives, tasers, stun guns, and pepper sprays, among other things. Gun shows were also cultural events as much as commercial enterprises.

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Army service of, 34–35, 36, 59–60, 250 wedding of Lori and, 95 in Witness Protection Program, 374–75 Fort Riley, Kans., 98, 132, 158 McVeigh stationed at, 36–37, 39–44, 51–53, 129, 139 racial polarization at, 39, 41 Foster, Vince, 91–92, 299 Founding Fathers, 3, 5, 35, 146 McVeigh’s views on, 1, 5, 6, 35, 225, 368 right-wing extremists and, 33, 58, 367, 368 4chan website, 59, 228, 369 Fox News, 21, 228, 241, 355–56, 361, 363 freedom: Clinton on, 193–94, 195–96 McVeigh’s conception of, 93, 348 right-wing conception of, 22–23, 57, 58, 70, 348, 353 Freeh, Louis, 175, 176, 182, 201, 264–65 John Doe sketches and, 167–68, 169–70, 212 micromanaging by, 174, 212 Unabomber and, 207 Gadsden flag, 2, 71, 245, 368 Garland, Merrick, 198–99, 209, 373 appointed attorney general, 295, 370 January 6 investigation supervised by, 295–96 Unabomber investigation supervised by, 206–8, 347–48 Garland, Merrick, as bombing prosecution supervisor, 196, 197–98, 201–2, 203 defense granted unlimited budget by, 229 at McVeigh’s preliminary hearing, 204–5 narrow prosecutorial focus of, 205, 208, 220, 242, 295–97, 309–10, 359 Garrett, Helena, 324–25 Garrett, Tevin, 310, 324 Geary Lake state park, 129, 139, 141, 180, 212, 220, 302 bomb assembled in, 141–44 McVeigh’s and Nichols’s meetings in, 113, 123, 130–32, 134 Gendron, Payton, 228 Gilligan, James, 19 Gingrich, Newt: as speaker of the House, 185–86, 196 violent and poisonous rhetoric of, 9–10, 190, 194–95, 205, 332 Giuliani, Rudy, 2, 319, 367 Global Terrorism Database, 362 Goelman, Aitan, 219, 292, 320–21 Goldstein, Jared A., 118 Gorelick, Jamie, 191, 199, 201, 206–7 McVeigh case and, 215–16, 218, 219 Gosar, Paul, 372 Gray, Michael, 352 Great Replacement, 21–22, 227, 363 Greene, Marjorie Taylor, 3, 241, 372 Gulf War, McVeigh’s service in, 46–47, 49, 50, 67, 357 Gumbel, Andrew, 240 guns, gun rights: Buchanan and, 58 McVeigh’s obsession with, 6, 17, 18–19, 23, 24–25, 29–30, 39, 53, 63, 70, 227, 363, 367 right-wing extremists and, 4–5, 68–69, 87, 95–96, 208, 227, 295, 299, 351, 357, 358, 365, 368, 371 see also assault weapons, 1994 bill banning; National Rifle Association; Second Amendment gun show loophole, 86 gun shows, gun show circuit, 9, 86–87 gun safety laws and, 228 McVeigh at, 9, 66–67, 87, 95, 96–97, 105, 113, 116–17, 123, 124, 226 political events at, 87 right-wing extremist community at, 9, 86, 352 Hackworth, David, 237–38 Halleck, Seymour, 276 Hammon, Cheryl, 151, 153 Hanger, Charlie, 161–62, 163, 375 McVeigh pulled over and arrested by, 162, 164–67, 171–72, 174, 176, 204, 251, 311 McVeigh trial testimony of, 315–17 Hankins, Jim, 229, 290 Hannity, Sean, 356 Harrison Radiator, 13–14, 16–17, 54 Hartzler, Adam and Alex, 218 Hartzler, Joe, 216–17, 373–74 multiple sclerosis of, 217 Hartzler, Joe, as lead counsel for McVeigh prosecution, 218–20, 251, 265, 267, 292, 297–98, 312, 331, 342 Fortiers and, 252, 254, 255–56, 321–23 John Doe number 2 and, 319–20 narrow prosecutorial focus of, 220 opening statement of, 310–11 speaking indictment and, 243–44 victims’ families and, 286–87 witnesses examined by, 319–20, 322–24 witness list streamlined by, 314, 329 Havens, Mike (fake name), 182, 243 Havens, Terry (fake name), 243 Heartland Motorsports Park, 110 Henley, William Ernest, 349–50 Henry, Patrick, 4, 5, 35, 146 Herbeck, Dan, 347 McVeigh’s letters to, 18, 35, 97, 348, 349 Herington, Kans., 52, 134, 139, 170, 180, 181, 182 Nichols’s house in, 123, 130, 180, 181, 260, 265, 266, 344 storage shed number 2 in, 129, 137, 139–40, 143, 163 Hersley, Jon, 204, 243 Hertig, Michael, 214–15 Heyer, Heather, 364 Hodge, Steve, 17, 60 McVeigh’s letters to, 23, 34, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 56, 65, 67, 84 Hodgkinson, James, 361 Homeland Security Department, U.S.

Assassination Vacation
by Sarah Vowell
Published 28 Mar 2005

That he and his wife, Sarah, turned this rotten luck into the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is downright heroic. And not the soft-focus treacle that “heroic” often implies. I’m on their mailing list, and the most impressive, lovable thing about them is their rage. The last mailing I got, seeking help to close the gun show loophole laws that allow terrorists and criminals to purchase all the firearms they want as long as it’s at folding tables set up at fairgrounds, featured a letter from Jim that opens, “I’m sitting here in my wheelchair today, mad as hell, trying to control my anger,” and another one from Sarah in which she tells a story about how right after Jim was shot, her son was playing with what he thought was a toy gun in a family member’s truck, but it turned out to be real and when she learned this she stormed over to the phone and called up the National Rifle Association, telling them, “This is Sarah Brady and I want you to know that I will be making it my life’s work to put you out of business!”

Come and Take It: The Gun Printer's Guide to Thinking Free
by Cody Wilson
Published 10 Oct 2016

The 3D printing machines will be capable of reproducing themselves. No place in the federal budget for an ATF agent in every home. Kids printing guns while their blissfully unaware parents think their young ’uns are playing on the computer. A prohibitionist is quoted as calling the Internet a permanent “gun show loophole.” And as expected, the article reproduced one of the more provocative of my public statements. From the original Wiki Weapon video: What’s great about the Wiki Weapon is it only needs to be lethal once. We will have the reality of a weapons system that can be printed out from your desk. Anywhere there is a computer, there is a weapon.

Tomorrow's Capitalist: My Search for the Soul of Business
by Alan Murray
Published 15 Dec 2022

Raise the minimum age to purchase firearms to 21. Ban high capacity magazines and bump stocks. Require universal background checks that include relevant mental health information and previous interactions with the law. Ensure a complete universal database of those banned from buying firearms. Close the private sale and gun show loophole that waives the necessity of background checks.11 In spite of extremely heavy backfire from the NRA, customers, and pro-gun legislators, Stack held his ground, losing an estimated $250 million in sales. In the coming years he became a vocal activist in Washington, promoting gun control measures.

Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy
by Jennifer Carlson
Published 2 May 2023

Rodrigo, a white Hispanic gun seller in Florida, also explicitly connected people’s political stances to their fitness as gun owners: They are the people—all the people that [people] say shouldn’t have guns, they are the ones coming in to buy guns! Everybody else already had their gun, I hate to say it so plainly like that, but I had a kid walk into my store with a Bernie Sanders shirt on. I got a Trump 2020 poster here, I got all kinds of shit here! This kid says, “Oh I need a gun! I want to use the gun show loophole!” I had to stop him—he left out of here almost crying. I am very confident that I converted him to grow up in the little time I had him, and he actually left here thanking me for Trump [laughs]. Rodrigo’s point that “everybody else already had their guns” stakes out a line between the “real” gun owners who already had firearms and those who were now desperate to acquire a gun.

Giving the Devil His Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist
by Michael Shermer
Published 8 Apr 2020

I closed with a bullet-point summation of my conclusions in “The Sandy Hook Effect,” points that I still contend are reasonable measures that both liberals and conservatives should be able to agree upon: Ban military-style assault weapons Ban high-capacity magazines (>10 bullets) Universal background check system Close the gun-show loophole Penalties for illegal gun trafficking Ban high-risk individuals from guns (convicted of violent crime, drugs, stalking, restraining orders) Ban sales to dangerous mentally ill Research funding on gun violence. My concluding slide in this debate, as it was for my Lott debates, was anodyne enough to be acceptable to most politicos: Even though we can’t do everything, we can do something to reduce the carnage of gun violence and further bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice, peace, and freedom.

The America That Reagan Built
by J. David Woodard
Published 15 Mar 2006

President Clinton sent a letter of condolence, and then flew to Colorado to personally comfort the families. The shooting ignited the gun control battle again across the nation, and the Clinton administration called for new measures to apply the Brady Gun Law prohibitions to juveniles, closing the so-called ‘‘gun show loophole’’ that allowed people to buy guns at events without a background check. Still, after all the investigations and explanations, the media reports and government bulletins, no one had any real answers for why the shooting happened. At decade’s end, some of the more cherished icons of American life lay shattered in the public eye.