Gun Show Loophole Essay

Earlier this year on January 5, President Barack Obama sought to close the “gun show loophole” by stating that “Anybody in the business of selling firearms must get a license and conduct background checks or be subject to criminal prosecution.” (Watch) This sounds like a feasible plan and it would be except for one thing; President Obama did not specify what qualifies as being in the business of selling firearms. Does he mean all gun dealers who sell firearms as a career or is he implying that even private citizens wanting to sell their gun to a friend must perform background checks? When people refer to “the gun show loophole” what they are really talking about is a private sales loophole. Every federally licensed gun dealer in the country is required to perform a background check before selling a gun to someone. They have had to do this with all handgun sales since 1994 and then all long gun purchases in 1998. (Lott) When anyone is seeking to purchase a gun the dealer uses The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) to determine whether the prospective gun owner is a felon, a …show more content…
The Bureau surveyed eight thousand inmates and what they learned was that only 0.7 percent of those surveyed had purchased a gun from a gun show. Forty percent claimed that they had gotten their guns from a friend or family member. (What) If less than one percent of these criminals used the “gun show loophole” is this loophole really a major problem? Gun shows have been labeled has something to fear because the supposedly weakly enforced procedures are thought to increase the likelihood of violent gun crime. In reality this is not true. Closing gun shows will strip people of their means to legally buy guns to protect themselves more than it will foil a criminal’s plan since criminals do not commonly get their weapons