Doug Grow of the Star Tribune:

Dhennin, a retired Anoka County sheriff’s deputy, and Sinner, a University of Minnesota grad student in public health, proved that you can buy just about anything you want in Minnesota.

Did he get a machine gun?

For Saturday’s excursion, Dhennin and Sinner, shopping on behalf of Citizens for a Safer Minnesota, an organization devoted to sane gun restrictions, were out to buy an assault rifle. Citizens for a Safer Minnesota wanted the rifle for a couple of reasons: 1) to show how available these weapons are; 2) to use the weapon as visual evidence about why it wasn’t such a good idea for the feds to allow a limited ban on assault weapons to fade away in 2004.

No, they are an anti-gun group. I bet they did not buy an assault rifle but probably a gun that looks like an assault rifle.

Dhennin and Sinner had no particular weapon in mind when they went to the Education Building at the State Fairgrounds for the Minnesota Weapons Collectors Association gun show.

“A candy store for terrorists,” is how Dhennin, a hunter and gun lover, described the weaponry available at the show.

They sell box cutters there? Or fertilizer? Or Ryder trucks? No terrorist attack here has been committed with guns that I know of.

Dhennin has been dismayed at the proliferation of assault rifles since the demise of the tepid federal ban.

The proliferation? I’d guess there was an initial spike in sales and then the manufacturers stopped making post ban models.

Dhennin and Sinner didn’t merely want to buy an assault rifle. They wanted to see whether they could make their purchase with no questions asked.

Gun show loophole in 3, 2, 1

Licensed gun dealers must do a background check before selling customers assault rifles or handguns.

Private dealers, though, apparently don’t need to bother with messy red tape.

There is no such thing, legally, as a private dealer. There are individuals who may sell guns in lawful commerce, kind of like if I sold you a handgun.

So, what did they buy?

Dhennin and Sinner approached a so-called private dealer who was displaying a Ruger Mini 14, a .223-caliber rifle, with a fold-up stock, pistol grip and magazines with a 30-round capacity. (According to a video, a expert can go through four magazines — 120 rounds — in 45 seconds with this weapon.)

Dhennin negotiated the price down from $550 to $500 before making the purchase and moving on to what Dhennin described, tongue-in-cheek, as the gun show “library.” This was a display area filled with pamphlets and literature about weaponry.

Kinda funny. See, the ruger mini-14 was specifically excluded from the assault weapons ban. Then, the guy buying the gun bought a book on how to convert it to a machine gun. The article then notes:

Selling fully automatic assault rifles is still illegal

Yes, it is (provided it was made after 1986) but if it’s not fully automatic, then it’s not an assault rifle.

Posted in uncategorized on April 22nd, 2005 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |