Journalists covering President Obama’s executive actions on firearms this week revealed their ignorance of existing gun laws, as many claimed incorrectly that Americans have been using gun shows and the Internet to legally evade federal standards on background checks.
From the New York Times to the Associated Press, news of Obama’s impending action on gun violence resulted in several stories claiming falsely that the law does little to regulate gun show and online sales.
“[F]aced with clear legal limitations on his authority, Mr. Obama will take modest steps that stop well short of the kind of largescale changes to the gun trade that he unsuccessfully sought from Congress three years ago,” the Times reported.
“That legislation would have closed loopholes that allow millions of guns to be sold without background checks at gun shows or in online firearm exchanges,” it added/
The Associated Press claimed in a breaking news alert: “Obama moves to require background checks for guns bought from dealers online, at gun shows.”
A closer look at current federal law, however, shows there are significant problems with these assertions.
First, federal law requires that licensed dealers perform background checks on all sales, regardless of where they occur. It is already illegal for a licensed dealer to sell at a gun show without also performing a background check.
Second, licensed dealers can legally sell online, but customers must first submit to a background check. Websites that sell guns, including Bud’s Gun Shop, Guns America, and Gunbroker, allow a person to pick out a firearm and pay online, but the dealer will not ship the item straight to the customer’s door.
In order for the transaction to be finalized, the buyer must “specify a local federal firearms license (FFL) holder to actually receive shipment of the gun,” Bearing Arms explained. “The seller (a federal firearms licensee) will then ship the sold firearm to the receiving gun dealer (another FFL), not the buyer.”
The customer must then go to the receiving FFL, fill out all necessary forms required by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms, and then pass a check performed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
“[A]ny sale from any licensed dealer first has to go through a background check. It doesn’t matter if he’s selling the firearm at a store, online, or at a gun show,” Lars Dalseide of the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action told Townhall.
“When it comes to online sales, guns can only be transferred to the buyer through a federally licensed firearms dealer — that’s the law,” he added.
Simply put, whether it’s online or brick-and-mortar, licensed dealers are already required by law to perform background checks on customers.
Sales conducted by individuals, however, are a different story. The law doesn’t recognize the seller in a single peer-to-peer sale as being a “dealer.”
So for a website like Armslist, which works like Craiglist in that it merely facilitates meeting between private sellers, there is nothing illegal about its members conducting the occasion personal sale. Armslist doesn’t carry stock or sell firearms. It only connects individuals.
And this is where the White House wants to take action. Obama and his team want to make sure that anyone who sells a gun is also licensed and performs a background check.
The Washington Free Beacon’s Stephen Gutowski, who is also a firearms instructor, explained separately that, “The only thing that matters is who is doing the sale: a licensed dealer or a private individual. This is also why Obama’s executive order is big news.”
“For decades only those who sell firearms as a substantial part of their business were considered ‘in the business,'” he added. “Under Obama’s order almost anybody selling a gun could be considered a dealer & have to get a federal firearms license. A radical change.”
But many of these details were lost this week on reporters who appeared genuinely confused as to the finer details of Obama’s proposed action.
Quartz claimed this week that the president’s announced executive order would require that, “gun sellers who operate at gun shows and on the Internet to be licensed, and subject them to criminal prosecution that can include up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if they are not.”
The article has since been characterized as “the most inaccurate explainer of the decade.”
“The author should be ashamed,” said National Review’s Charles C. W. Cooke.
He was not the only one in media who appeared generally disappointed in how the press covered the gun control announcement.
“It’s time like these where you see highly respected journalists who are regularly very smart, become absolutely clueless on firearms,” said Independent Journal’s Joe Perticone.
Real Clear Policy’s Robert VerBruggen added in a separate note, “In fairness to confused journalists, though, admin did promise action on the ‘gun show loophole’ and then just restated current law.”
