The Gun Show Loophole

The first item on the list to Protect our Children and our Communities by Reducing Gun Violence is the last to discuss.

1.  Closing background check loopholes to keep guns out of dangerous hands.

That is pretty specific to what's commonly called the gun show loophole -- which indeed does not apply only to gun shows.   This revolves around the requirement for federally licensed firearms dealers to conduct  background checks on gun buyers.  Specifically in practice, the NICS or acceptable alternative.     There are a number of exceptions, in that other, stricter,  federal, state or local laws may apply in any given situation.   But the law (mainly The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act)  doesn't cover personal sales.   Be those through a newspaper ad, at a hobbyist gathering, or otherwise,  between friends, acquaintances or strangers.    In that sense, it's not a loophole at all.

For the background check system, over a 15 year period, it blocked 1.8% of attempted firearms purchases, although some small number of the denials were appealed and reversed.  Few blocks were prosecuted for the attempt.   The majority of these denials were for felons, a large amount of the rest were for fugitives from justice.   There are likely some statistics somewhere that break down the number of attempts by known felons or career criminals and so on, maybe.   If so, nobody's coughing them up as evidence of something or another.

However, that 1994-2009 blocked purchase statistic of 1.8% does not include anything other than sales involving background checks.     Some sources claim that 40% of all sales do not involve a background check.  If true, which is up for debate, essentially means that only 60% of gun purchases are from a dealer, with 1.8% of those 60% blocked.     The rest?   Nobody's coughing that up either.   Just guessing about it.

We could ask if criminals (and others precluded from purchasing a firearm at a federally licensed dealer) typically buy their weapons from neighbors and family and  newspaper ads and hobbyist gatherings, or if they steal them, or get them on the black market, or just use something else.  We can ask if they buy guns some other legal way instead  of going to the store, because they know they can't buy them at a store.   Or we could ask if that same 1.8% blocked-attempt number would (if it existed) also be 1.8% for this alleged 40% of non-dealer purchases.   We could even ask if the system could handle 100% tracking even if it could be required and managed.

Instead, we're first going to take issue with a claim in the press release.   The point they make there is "the background check system is the most efficient and effective way to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals".   Is it?   We should know the answer to that if we want to know if such a thing will indeed make things safer by reducing violence.  

Or we could think about the people this would apply to, think of it as they might.   If you were a dangerous individual, and you wanted a gun, and there was an instant and reliable and universal 100% check in place.  If  you knew about it and knew you would fail it, what would you do?    Probably not try it out.   So this gun, would you buy one illegally, would you settle on a blade, would you give up and just be undangerous?   Who's to tell.   We might as well be considering what percentage of violence is non-gun (or even non-weapon; aka steel chair, fists, pillow, tire iron) to begin with.  Or we might as well be imagining what the numbers would be like if all firearms on the planet all magically disintegrated five minutes from now.

Because nobody can show what sort of impact, if any, there would be from closing these so-called loopholes.   Loophole; the word giving the idea that something wrong and bad is going on, that somebody is bypassing something, getting around it, getting away with it.   No.  It's simply that the current laws cover some things and other things just simply aren't covered by it.   There isn't any loophole, there's a law that covers federally licensed sales of guns, and then there are other things that aren't   federally licensed sales of guns.

Now, aside from this rose-colored glasses and misty-eyed idea that stopping some 2% of potential gun purchasers that go to stores and fill out forms is worth the time and money and effort put into it.  Beside assuming that even precluding all future purchases of any kind entirely would do anything to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous individuals.   Beyond the claim that  total background checks on all gun purchases and transfers would result in safer children and communities by reducing gun violence.

The bottom line is that in many ways, maybe all of them, item one here is a non-answer and an un-solution.   It's linguistically devoid of meaning, and it's illogical and incorrect.  Meaningless, superfluous.

So with that settled, we may ask, what's a gun show?  

As a stand-in for all non-dealer purchases, let's say a gun show is the only way to do so.   Obviously it's not the only way, but let's say for the sake of argument and for ease of discussion.  Pretend that there's a single choice between 'a dealer with a check' and 'a gun show with no check'.    We'll also ignore those at gun shows with licenses that are required to and do a background check and those at gun shows not with licenses that aren't required to do a background check and make one anyway.

It appears that those upset with gun shows don't really understand them.  One might bet that they've never even been to one, and know nothing about them.  Why not look into that.

Just like any group, especially those who feel strongly about their hobby, they like gathering together for a number of reasons.    So while nobody much goes deer hunting or target shooting or engages in self-defense with stamps, photographs, earrings, artwork,  kitchen items, marital aids, comic books, ornaments, fishing boats or travel trailers, just like those sorts of groups, gun users and collectors and enthusiasts gather.  

While some may have the idea that simply walking into a gun show turns a person into a buddy of everyone there, one might want to think of the stereotype of a gun owner.    What would that be.  Plenty of things, maybe even all at once in the mind of "an outsider".   They'd be individualistic,  cautious of the government, a hick, a redneck, current or ex-military or police, hunters, gun-nuts, paranoid conspiracy-theorist.   Maybe the idea is just conservative church-going small-town rural type.  

For some reason, that sort of stereotype is all thrown out the window at some point.    Why would anyone believe that anyone at one of these gun shows selling guns, background check requirement or not, background check made or not, is just going to stop caring about who might have the gun being sold?   Of course the vast majority of them care.

People selling guns at a gun show, licensed or not,  aren't just capriciously and recklessly selling guns to children, shifty-eyed gang members, nervous out-of-place people, babbling lunatics, and stoners high on goofballs.   The people at gun shows selling things (be they guns or not) don't want guns in the hands of mass murderers or the insane or minors or the untrained either.   True, such personal judgments are not a background check, but maybe it's sometimes better.  You don't like the person, whyever that is, you don't sell to them, no requirement to explain why.  

So some doped-up gang-banger isn't going to walk in to a gun show and feel welcome and comfortable in the first place, and  for good reason.   Nobody's going to sell to them, if they don't call the police first.    Look, you're a criminal or displaying bizarre behavior and you're going to walk into a building full of armed citizens that are certainly not going to like you?

No matter which way we take all of that, the background check or not, how gun shows are probably one of the worst places a creepy withdrawn shy oddball would go to purchase weapons.   The truth of it is that these recent lunatics didn't purchase their weapons at gun shows.    I'm sure some crazy people and criminals have done so at some times.   That's a guess from the numbers and likelihoods of such from those numbers.  But which recent stories predominately feature such information??   Surely such details would warrant major attention from anyone who is "anti-gun".

Apparently not supported by the facts.    To use the Sandy Hook massacre as illustration again, he killed his mother and took hers.  To use the Aurora theater slaughter, he bought them at a number of gun stores, passing the background checks.   Even though it's not in the US, and so has very very limited applicability,  the Oslo terror attack.   It's pretty certain the nutbag didn't get his weapons at a gun show.   Although there was a report he tried to buy some in Prague but failed miserably....   The reports go that he got both his Glock and Ruger legally in Norway and he was registered for them there.  Gun shows don't apply to any of these at all.

So then, why is closing this non-existent loophole, that doesn't apply to much if anything, the first thing on our list?   Even if we could prove it matters a lot, which we can't, it doesn't apply to what's been going on anyway.

One last thing to think about though, not directly related to this first item.   At ranges, gun shows, military bases, police stations; anywhere there are weapons, accidents happen.  Yet recently there have been a spate of stories about incidents of people being shot at gun shows.   Well, of course that happens, it's just not usually focused on any more than deep sea fishermen sometimes drowning is.   So why would accidental shootings around weapons be big surprising news?    Yet one thing about these stories contradicts another idea.  When there's an accidental discharge of a weapon where many armed people are, nobody present just starts willy-nilly blasting everyone in sight, causing mass carnage out of fear or blood-lust.  What else is all out of proportion?

In closing then.

How does one solve a social problem of violence, with guns or not with guns? The issue is violence, not how it is carried out, isn't it?  If we ask the question of the highly-publicized mass murders, we might start with asking how many others not in these big stories are the victims of gun violence.  What are the total numbers, what is the biggest problem to solve, who's doing it, why, when, where and how.   These berserk killing rampages are far less common (but no less tragic) than the hundreds and thousands of separate and also tragic incidents of gun violence that plague the world in general and the US in particular.  The entirety adds up to much larger numbers of deaths and injuries than any one incident, no matter how horrible.

What are the steps we can take as a nation and as a society that actually preclude another Sandy Hook or Columbine or Aurora or Oslo or Oklahoma City, and so on.  Would these ideas to fix things also apply to precluding the many hundreds and thousands of incidents that not used for political and policy purposes.   Incidents that happen not just once in a while, but every day, week, month, year, decade and century, that include guns and don't.   And like these large scale tragedies tend to hide the bigger larger scale tragedy, these aberrant uses of weapons are but a small part of the safe, legal, ordinary ownership.  What is the point of focusing in on the out of the ordinary and not trying to fix the common?

Not to sound heartless, because our heart goes out to everyone impacted by any sort of violence, be it a school shooting, byproduct of gang violence, robbery gone wrong, serial killer victim, case of uxoricide or mariticide. By gun, knife, fist, or otherwise.   Our heart goes out, regardless of the weapon that might be used.

Yet like the press release itself states:  "We won't be able to stop every violent act, but if there is even one thing that we can do to prevent any of these events, we have a deep obligation, all of us, to try." This seems to ignore the quite real and valid concepts of scarcity of resources and diminishing returns.   It seems to ignore the reality of what is and instead focus on what is wanted.   The real world for the imaginary possibility under circumstances that do not exist to operate under.

The real common-sense of all this is is that if you can't stop every violent act,  you should be focusing on using the bulk of your resources to stop the bulk of the violent acts.   You shouldn't be wasting your time and money on increasing background checks or widening the gun-free zone around a school or prohibiting new sales of something  based upon its looks.

If we have a deep obligation to try to prevent such events, and we do, shouldn't we be focusing on solutions that have the best chance of preventing them?    Not wasting time on things that have a small chance or little impact?

What we are doing here is fulfilling our end of this deep obligation, trying to explain why.   If we want fix all this suffering "too much at the hands of dangerous people who use guns to commit horrific acts of violence" then we should be considering ideas that apply to the problem of  people who commit horrific acts of violence.