We've been overwhelmed with disinformation about guns lately.
The President and his tame media have presented the issue as if we were in the Wild West with nothing between a criminal and buying a gun but ready cash...
Nothing could be further from the truth!
Guns are accounted for from the second a frame/receiver/lower are machined... documented through the distribution process, logged in at a dealer, and not transferred till that dealer has a confirmation code that shows a background check has resulted in permission to sell the weapon. With the transfer recorded along with the record of the buyer's successful background check.
Being a felon, habitual drug user, dishonorably discharged ex-military, a misdemeanor domestic conviction means that HOLDING a firearm is a crime... Attempting to buy a firearm as a prohibited person is another felony, and attempting to buy FOR a Prohibited Person yet another...
Our Department of Justice... with the evidence of these crimes filled out in the perpetrator's own handwriting, fingerprints on the document, and a witness standing behind the counter... have failed to prosecute these crimes in over 90% of the cases in which a prospective sale was denied.
That "40%" of sales number was for a sample of 251 people in 1969... with MOST of the purchases reported being done BEFORE the federal requirement for background checks kicked in....
Todays dealer sales are ALL performed with a background check, NO MATTER WHERE they may take place... In a store, at a gun show, or across the table in their kitchen...
PRIVATE sales do not require a background check, and private means that the seller IS NOT in the business of making gun sales... (that's a felony if you're not licensed)
Private sales to a Prohibited Person are illegal with the provision that the seller knew or SHOULD HAVE KNOWN that they were dealing with someone ineligible to possess a firearm.
On the other hand that leaves it open for a parents/grandparents to gift family firearms to a child, friends to sell one another firearms, and other dispositions of private property take place respecting the property rights of the legal owner.
It's NOT a loophole, as reading the discussion on the floor of Congress while this was being hammered out will attest... it was The Will Of Congress that these sales be unrestricted except by the Prohibited Persons rule.
