Gun Show Loophole
A local reader emails:
Just as an anecdotal. On Saturday at the Chilhowie show, I saw “The Gun Show Loophole” shot all to pieces. A woman right in front of me tried to buy a gun from a dealer and failed the background check with an outstanding felony. Someone from the dealer’s table (Mike’s Gun Room) slipped quietly out and alerted the police who respectfully and quietly escorted the woman and her friend from the building.
But they tell me that doesn’t happen.
December 31st, 2013 at 1:17 pm
How would the dealer know why the denial was made? Sorry, don’t buy it. All NICS tells you is approved, denied, or delayed. They don’t tell you why.
Does this dealer make a habit out of calling the cops for every denial? For example, there were 78,906 NICS denials received from the FBI during 2008, and referred 5,573 denials (7%) within the established guidelines to field divisions. The referred cases were made up of 2,472 delayed denials (3% of all denials) and 3,101 standard denials (4%). The remaining denials (73,333 – 93%) did not meet referral guidelines or were overturned after review by the FBI.
The ATF field offices declined to refer 6,086 of the 2008 NICS denial cases for prosecution. The most common reasons for declinations were no prosecutive merit (2,125 cases,35%), no potential or unfounded (1,325 cases, 22%), and federal or state guidelines
were not met (1,267 cases, 21%). Other reasons for declination by a field office included subjects found to not be prohibited (725 cases, 12%) and closure by a supervisor (490 cases, 8%).
In fact, of the 78,906 denials, only 147 were found to be actual prohibited persons. That means that a NICS denial has an inaccuracy rate of more than 99.8%.
December 31st, 2013 at 1:18 pm
Oh, BTW: Here is my source:
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/bjs/231052.pdf
December 31st, 2013 at 2:09 pm
Dive, if you had seen the woman, you’d buy it.
I don’t know how they determined she was wanted, but they did.
December 31st, 2013 at 3:47 pm
And they absolutely couldn’t find this “felon” (it doesn’t take much to qualify as a “felon” anymore) until she showed up at a gun show and tried to buy a gun. And she didn’t bother to try buying a gun from a “private sale” table, but went right to a dealer and filled out false statements on a 4473 instead.
That’s two more significant filters.
I’m not saying that astronomically improbable events don’t happen. I’m just saying that this is an astronomically improbable event. Was Zaphod Beeblebrox, or Arthur Dent, anywhere on the premise?
December 31st, 2013 at 5:00 pm
Lyle – I agree that we are definitely approaching infinite improbability here! BESIDES – even if it was true, there’s a huge difference in reporting a denial and reporting an outstanding felony warrant to a cop who is close at hand. Are we so anti-big-government that we are now opposed to criminals being arrested?
December 31st, 2013 at 9:52 pm
JJ. The answer is, “It Depends”. Was her felony for bank robbery or the like? Or one of those “picked up a bald eagle feather” types of felonies?
December 31st, 2013 at 11:50 pm
Judging by her teeth…looked kinda like the meth kind.
January 1st, 2014 at 1:48 pm
And yet again, the police arrived on the scene AFTER a crime was committed. Tell me again what purpose they serve that can’t be accomplished by the rest of us? And why bother to tell the police in the first place? The dealer had already denied her, so moving on…
January 2nd, 2014 at 4:33 am
What’s wrong with you people? That’s not an example of what’s referred to as the gun show loophole. If she went on Craig’s List and met an anonymous gun seller in the parking lot, that would be the gun show loophole.
January 2nd, 2014 at 4:18 pm
Ah, but Mike, the gun-grabbing anti-rights bigots keep crying about how we need universal background checks because they claim that no background checks are required at gun shows (thus, “Gun Show Loophole” — pure gun banner terminology there).
Of course, since all sales at gun shows are conducted EXACTLY like the same transaction would be conducted if there was no gun show, we know the bigots are lying.
Of course, I doubt this story, because the check comes back, approved, denied, or delayed — I am not aware of the NICS check coming back with an actual _reason_ for denial (although at one time WAAAAAAY back when this started, some FFLs used to get reasons for denials at least some of the time — as my store was asked to BS a buyer with felony warrants until the cops could roll up). Maybe if it is a state system, they might give out reasons, but what states are still using a state-based interface system that gives reasons?