The report alleges that both licensed and unlicensed gun dealers at the shows in all three states were willing to sell firearms to detectives posing either as people admitting they could not pass a background check or as obvious “straw buyers” for other parties, according to Dayton Daily News reporters Lou Grieco and Tom Beyerlein. “Both kinds of sales violate federal law,” the New York Times’ David Chen reports.
The report comes out at a time when demand for guns is running high, apparently the result of fears that the new Obama administration will try to strengthen gun-control laws. In Butler County, the 1,497 new permits for concealed-carry licenses in the first six months of 2009 have already surpassed the 1,391 issued for all of 2008 — and exceed the number of permits (1,026) issued in first-half 2009 for the more populous Montgomery County.
Gun shows have long been suspected as places where the laws regulating gun sales are regularly skirted. The Washington Post reports that the University of California at Davis Violence Prevention Research Program last month released a similar report called “Inside Gun Shows: What Goes On When Everybody Thinks Nobody’s Watching,” which examined 78 gun shows in 19 states and produced similar results. “Illegal transactions were often conducted entirely out in the open,” Garen Wintemute, the report’s author, told the Post. “The sense of impunity among sellers and purchasers was remarkable.”
Bloomberg, already a foe of the gun lobby, is to be applauded for helping to expose this dirty little secret behind gun shows. His report can be read at nyc.gov/gunshow.
The mayor says he intends to send the report to every member of Congress and hopes that the investigation “would put pressure on Congress to pass pending bills ... that would require background checks for all sales by private sellers at gun shows,” according to the Times.
“The gun show loophole is a deadly serious problem,” Bloomberg says. We agree. Gun violence is rampant in America. It’s time for lawmakers to take action to ensure that gun show sellers aren’t recklessly putting guns into the hands of people who otherwise would not be able to obtain them.