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I'm selling a gun. It's an 1891 Modelo Argentino Mauser that was built some time in the 1890s. It's a fine old rifle that I bought thinking I'd use for deer hunting, but it has been sitting in the gun safe for over year and I find that it's time for it to go. The proceeds will go toward a new guitar.
All of that is well and good, but there are several serious problems with this planned transaction. Follow me past the squiggle.
I really want this guitar. It's listed on Craigslist at a terrific price and I suspect that the only reason it hasn't sold yet is because the title of the ad is badly phrased. So I need the cash that will be generated by the sale of this rifle so I can snatch up the guitar before someone else does. That means a quick gun sale. The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, passed in 1993, requires a National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) review of the prospective buyer. This is done by a Federal Firearms License (FFL) holder for any firearm transaction occurring across state lines and therefore falling under federal jurisdiction. Thanks to Wikipedia, I can tell you that a person prohibited from purchasing this rifle across state lines would be a person who:
Has been convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;
Is under indictment for a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;
Is a fugitive from justice;
Is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance;
Has been adjudicated as a mental defective or committed to a mental institution;
Is illegally or unlawfully in the United States;
Has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions;
Having been a citizen of the United States, has renounced U.S. citizenship;
Is subject to a court order that restrains the person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of such intimate partner;
Has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.
But because freedom, I can sell this gun to any resident of my state without that background check. All of the responsibility for determining whether the buyer falls into one of the above-listed categories of prohibited persons rests solely with me. I don't have to report this sale to any government agency, because the NRA has convinced a particularly vociferous segment of the population that once the government knows you own a gun, they're going to come and take it, round you up, and put you in work camps or something.
So although I'm prohibited from knowingly selling this rifle to anyone falling into the above prohibited categories, the chances of any law enforcement agency knowing that I've done so are extremely slim. But wait, there's more. If I want to, I can take a truckload of guns down to the gun show and sell them all without background checks. I would simply rent a table or three like any other dealer and put up a sign indicating that these are from a private collection. It doesn't even have to be my private collection - I could be selling them for a friend. Because these are privately-owned guns, I don't have to be a licensed dealer. I just have to sell them to other residents of my state. If you want to see this in action on a truly epic scale, take a trip to Tulsa, Oklahoma in November for the Wanenmacher Tulsa Arms Show and take a look at what 11 acres of weapons and ammunition look like. And these gun shows happen all the time, all over the country, albeit on a smaller scale.
(A brief aside - someone should seriously go to Tulsa and make a documentary about the Wanenmacher show. It's completely insane. And I say that as a hunter and gun owner).
And one more thing - despite the fact that the rifle I'm selling is a perfectly working weapon that holds five rounds and fires a 174-grain, full metal jacket bullet at 2,460 feet per second as fast as you can work the bolt and pull the trigger, despite the fact that this rifle and many others like it were used by the military in Argentina and other South American nations through the first half of the 20th Century - this rifle is subject to none of the laws listed above because under US law it's not considered a firearm. Having been constructed before 1898, this particular rifle is considered an antique and is therefore exempt. I can legally sell it to anyone, anywhere (to be fair, that exemption is really quite rare and most of the guns to which it applies are things like single-shot, muzzle-loading black powder guns).
So what to do? I really want that guitar. Instead of taking a chance on a private sale with no background check, I'm going to do what I've done on the few occasions when I've sold guns in the past - I'm going to list it for sale on the internet with a gun auction service, and I'm going to require that I receive the address and license of an FFL dealer to whom I will ship it. The FFL dealer will then run the background check and, while I can't be 100% certain that the buyer isn't performing a straw purchase, at least the transaction will be recorded and the buyer will be on file. Hopefully this neat old rifle with a century's worth of history will go to a collector or hunter who will get some use out of it. The transaction will take much longer than selling to someone locally and someone else may snatch up that guitar, but so what? No guitar is worth the risk, not even a Telecaster loaded with P-90s.
But not every gun owner sees things the way I do, which is why this country needs a ban on assault weapons, waiting periods for all handgun sales, and instant background checks for all firearms transactions.