The Real Deal About Gun Shows and the Loophole

January 13, 2002

by Red Thomas

If your first reaction is "Nobody can teach me anything about guns," you’re absolutely right; you can’t learn anything. If you’re interested in being informed, this is for you. I’ve been studying gun control and existing gun laws for four years now. I’ve studied the web sites of the major gun control groups, major gun owner rights groups, and, most importantly, I’ve read state and federal law and law enforcement’s research.

When I began this report, I asked about a hundred people from all aspects of life and political agendas what they thought gun shows were and what laws applied. Oddly enough, pro and anti gun people agree on what they think goes on at gun shows more times that you might think. We’ve heard of children, felons, and terrorists buying guns at gun shows. Everyone pictured boys 13, 14, and 15 years old as youths, and 16 and 17 year old boys as the juveniles. A great many people envisioned scruffy looking felons (and nowadays terrorists) slinking around the displays looking for unlicensed dealers to buy crime guns and assault rifles to send back to the Jihad. Everyone said they didn’t want criminals and children to get guns. Given those images, I set out to see how the public’s mental picture matched reality.

Gun shows are full of the same kind of people who attend car, craft, boat, and home and garden shows. Merchants with any product remotely associated with the show’s theme will rent table space. Gun shows are places where people who lawfully enjoy a myriad of sport shooting hobbies go to see a wide variety of goods and services. Local, state, and federal laws apply all the time, and gun shows are no exception.

About 25% of the displays at gun shows are tables of guns owned by federally licensed dealers, and the vast majority have shops in and around your town; all of them are from your state. There are a handful of people with parts of their private collection to sell or trade. Generally, these private collections have rare and obscure guns, or they are for hunting or specialized shooting sports. The vast majority of the tables are clothing, accessories, shooting supplies of all nature, parts for guns that haven’t been made in some cases for generations, and army/navy surplus junk. Any of these displays could possibly have one or two guns in various states of repair from friends and associates of the merchant. The private collectors, merchants selling the odd gun for a friend, and ordinary people like you walking around are the unlicensed dealers you hear about. Generally speaking, the type of guns they sell are totally unsuited to crime. Can a criminal buy a gun from these people without federal and state scrutiny? Yes. However, armed felons use this method to obtain guns about 1.5% of the time, according to The Justice Department’s report "Federal Firearms Offenders," June 2000, Page 10.

Americans for Gun Safety (AGS) and other gun control groups cite the ATF report "Following the Gun."(June 2000) "Gun shows are the second leading source of illegal firearms recovered in gun trafficking investigations." Can we reconcile the federal government/NRA statistic of 1.5% with federal government/gun control statistic of gun shows as the number two source for crime guns?

The key word is "trafficking." "Following the Gun" is about well organized criminal operations that combine professional/amateur straw purchasing rings, people with multiple false identity cards, corrupt Federal Firearms Licensees (FFL), and commercial gun theft on a grand scale (all of which are immune to Brady background checks) to feed a criminal black market. Over a twenty-nine month period, 1,530 investigations are summed up on page 13. The average investigation involved 130 firearms and there was an average of 40 firearms in each of over half the investigations. The ATF measured illegal guns from these sophisticated criminal groups by the tens of thousands.

Most gun control groups say terrorists buy guns at gun shows. AGS has an eye-catching box on their home page that says "Foreign terrorists and gun shows." AGS goes on to say the boys from Hamas and Hezbollah went to gun shows, were trailed by law enforcement, and didn’t do anything wrong. They were arrested later and found to be part of much larger criminal conspiracies. Ask yourself; "Why would terrorists pay top dollar to smuggle American guns with lower performance to the Middle East and Africa when their market is flooded with fully automatic AK-47s costing two goats and a chicken?"

"Following the Gun" says youths are 18-24 years old and not children! Youths are allowed to buy guns (18 for long guns; 21 for hand guns) with full Brady blessing. Juveniles - the under 18, can’t buy guns under any circumstance crowd - purchased a gun two times (0.8%).

Finally, I read "Gun Shows: Brady Checks and Crime Gun Traces." It is cited by every gun control group mentioning the loophole. The 6 November 1998 letter that started the loophole was from Bill Clinton to the Secretary of the Treasury (who controls the ATF) and the Attorney General. It ends with: "To recommend to me what actions our administration can take - including proposed legislation - to ensure firearms sales at gun shows are not exempt from Brady background checks or other provisions of our federal gun laws." President Clinton instructed agency heads (who were noted gun control advocates) to find a way to stop private sales, based solely on the request of gun control celebrities working out of the Oval Office. Could this report be any less surprising?

The more you research, the more you find out career criminals acquire black market guns from professional gun runners (that Brady background checks can’t touch) just like they acquire drugs. Have you been manipulated to believe gun shows are something they are not? That answer lies within you. If you believe everything bad is already illegal and we need criminals to fear capture and punishment more than regulation; share this article with your friends and your elected representatives. If you believe this article proves extending background checks to private sales will stop multimillion dollar criminal enterprises; you should also share this with your friends and elected representatives.

Following the Gun (June 2000)
Federal Firearms Offenders (June 2000)
Gun Shows: Brady Checks and Crime Gun Traces (January 1999)

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Red Thomas retired from the United States Army in 1994 as a Sergeant First Class Armor Master Gunner. Since becoming disabled, Red has devoted himself to introducing people to responsible gun ownership and fighting media hype that promotes unwarranted public fear. He lives in Mesa, Arizona. Unlimited reproduction and distribution of this article is authorized provided credit to the author is given, and the full text is republished unedited.