Columbine, 11 Years Later

Two rallies by gun rights celebrants and anti- government polemicists are planned Monday on both sides of Washington’s Potomac River. They will invoke the Second Amendment and the Battles of Lexington and Concord. A more apt, and tragic, anniversary to keep in mind is the Columbine school massacre of 1999. Eleven years later, and Congress has failed to close the gun show loophole that made the carnage possible.

Two Columbine students had a friend obtain four high-powered weapons, no-questions-asked, from gun show “hobbyist” dealers, and then used them to kill 12 children and a teacher. Since then, the gun lobby and its all-too-willing Congressional enablers have managed to block all efforts to require buyers at weekend gun shows to undergo the same background checks required of buyers at federally registered gun shops.

Polls show the public favors closing the gun show loophole by a wide margin, but the people’s right to safety is nothing when compared with the gun lobby’s clout.

At a park in Virginia just across from the nation’s capital, marchers will be openly strutting with their weapons, as the state’s “open carry” law permits. Participants at the other rally on the National Mall are being told that it is illegal to flash guns, so they must dare to leave them home. Just up the Hill in Congress, the gun lobby’s ever-compliant caucus is fighting that ban too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/opinion/18sun4.html?th&emc=th

On 'McVeigh day.'

Why is that?

Why is that?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/36126909#36126909

Interesting.

In case you have forgotten, the governor of Massachusetts sent troops to confiscate the colonists' firearms on April 19, 1775.

On a stone marker in the Lexington Common, are the words of Captain John Parker, leader of the 77 Lexington minutemen: “Stand your ground; don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

In case you hadn't noticed, that plan by the government to confiscate personal firearms from ordinary Americans sparked a revolution; and THAT is the significance of April 19th.

McVeigh picked that date because he was obsessed with the April 19, 1993 FBI assault Janet Reno ordered on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold made plenty of reference to the fact they deliberately picked today's date, 'Zwanzig April' because they wanted to co-incide with "der Führergeburtstag" or Hitler's birthday.

So, when can we expect you to come off with a resounding chorus of. "Die Fahne Hoch?"

Bill Clinton's comments today, tying extremists' "open carry" party to McVeigh's attack:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20002836-503544.html

that you are not only especially hateful, but rather get off to standard internet punking. 'McVeigh Day:' Such pandering to fear, such GOP-style smear.

those arent the guys who shoot you for crack. get real.

Evil in the hearts of two very sick boys was the cause of the Columbine tragedy.

They don't check anything at gun shows here in Texas.

Answer: None.
FFLs must still run NICS background checks (like they do in a store) on buyers and collect Form 4473.
Private sellers can sell their personal firearms just as if they were selling it to a friend in their house.
Straw purchasing is still illegal.

Conclusion: "The Gunshow Loophole" is not a loophole - it's a meme which also suffers from unfortunate nomenclature.
The laws at a gunshow are identical to every square inch of state outside that gunshow. Period.
Ergo, "'The Gunshow Loophole' - Quite possibly the stupidest talking point ever."

or my lying eyes?

By law, Federal Firearms License holders MUST ABSOLUTELY WITHOUT EXCEPTION (even on a leap year) record all sales of firearms to private citizens, law enforcement agencies, and other dealers. Yes, this even includes while being present at a gun show. These sales are to be recorded in the dealers "books" along with filing a Form 4473 including an NICS check. Sales to LEO and civilians involving machine guns, silencers, or any other NFA item require a special FFL who also has SOT status (colloquially called a "Class III Dealer") and quite a bit more paperword and proceedures. To be any sort of legal dealer, one who regularly engages in the sale of firearms as a business, one must obtain the propor Federal Firearms Licenses from the ATF.

This is the law. If you are witnessing dealers selling firearms with no NICS check or paperwork then these sales are ILLEGAL.
Multiple firearms statutes are ALREADY being broken. This has nothing to do with the gunshow poophole inanities.
Call the police if you witness this because it is not allowed.

Also, recognize that a private citizen have the right to sell a couple guns from their private collection.
The ATF determines if a citizen's private sales cross the threshold of "conducting a business".
It would behoove a citizen to not flirt with such limitations and make any large numbers of transfers through 3rd party FFLs.
Once again, if you suspect an individual to be conducting business without an FFL... these sales may be ILLEGAL.
Multiple firearms statutes are ALREADY being broken. Call the police if you witness this because it is not allowed.

The only way that you can't be checked is if you make a private purchase, in which case that is the same as going to the guy's home, or he to yours, to conduct the sale.

Repeatedly.

And if he was, the dealer has probably already been shut down and jailed by the ATF.

They have no sense of humor and will arrest their own significant others for breaking the law.


They have even declared EVERY fourteen inch shoelace in the nation as a machine gun, and sent someone to prison for ten years for owning said shoelace.

"They don't check anything a gun shows here in Texas" and in other states because "gun shows" are merely rent-a-halls, not gun dealers or retailers. You see, the NICS check is for Federal Firearms Licensees: if these dealers are at gun shows, they must follow the NICS requirement; if an individual seller is at a gun show, he/she is not required to use the NICS test. In fact, he/she CANNOT access the NICS system unless he/she is a FFL holder. In other words, I can sell my shotgun over the kitchen table to a buyer, and I cannot use the NICS test. My only requirement is to not knowingly sell a firearm to an individual who has a criminal record or has been adjudicated as mentally incompetent. If I sell my shotgun at a gun show, the same conditions apply. If I sell my shotgun out of the trunk in a vacant law, the same conditions apply.

There is no "loop hole," except in the minds of the Brady Center.

Everyone who sells a firearm at a gun show must comply with all local, state and Federal laws. Every time I have bought a firearm from a licensed FFL at a gun show, I was required to fill out form 4473, and wait for them to call the FBI for a NICS check... Every time!

Every time I have purchased a firearm from an individual at a gun show, it was cash and carry, just as if I had gone to their home (or they, mine) to complete the transaction.

A gun show is not some magical place where the laws don't apply. In fact, because of the large visible (and non-visible) police/BATF presence at most gun show, the laws are more closely followed there than anywhere else.

is quite otherwise.

I think you misunderstand what he said.

...from a dealer unless he's talking about an antique firearm or muzzle-loader.

Every FFL holder has to comply with federal, state, and local laws wherever a transaction occurs.

There is no special provision in the law for gun shows.

Or anywhere else for that matter.


Or maybe you think that anyone who is selling a privately owned firearm is a de facto "dealer"?

Because they are not. Whether someone is selling their privately owned firearm at a show, in a classified ad, or to whoever they happen to meet at the local range, that is generally their right, provided they have no reason to suspect that a potential buyer is prohbited from owning a firearm.

The way the law is currently set up, there is no real way for a private citizen to verify that a buyer isn't lying to them about their ability to own, and the way to fix that is to fix the laws on the books or come up with some other effective way to check, like a mandatory marking on the license of any individual prohibited from owning a firearm. Five second, foolproof check.

The answer isn't to try to infringe on private property rights or make the purchase of a firearm a permanent thing.

As a individual I can, and do buy and sell firearms as a hobby. I do so to add and/or improve my collection. I am NOT a FFL dealer and all of my sales/buys/ trades are legal.

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas

And both times the gun dealers I sold the weapons to required full identification from me and provided me with transaction documents for our mutual protection.

I'll nominate "plastic guns that can get past airport security".

who have blocked efforts to close the completely erroneously monikered "gun show loophole". It is in fact THE CONSTITUTION which has kept the federal government rightfully at bay on this issue. And it has not one thing to do with the 2nd Amendment. It has to do with the sovereignty of the US states. The federal government has NO JURISDICTION over private, person to person, intrastate sales of ANYTHING which is otherwise legal to own. The only way the feds have control over the sale of firearms is through the ffl licensing act which is, by some accounts, a bastardization of the commerce clause...in fact some states are now defying federal jurisdiction over the sale of new guns manufactured within a state, then sold to a resident of the same state.

If there were any way to circumvent states rights on this issue the "gun show loophole" would have been closed years ago.

It really doesn't help the NY Times historical position against the public ownership of firearms to keep spewing this false shit.

Fixed that for you.


The gun lobby doesn't actually object to that. What they're not interested in is the imposition of a background check requirement with which it is impossible to comply (e.g. by requiring background checks while restricting access to NICS to FFLs), thereby in effect outlawing private party sales at gun shows.


... in polls that falsely claim that the "gun show loophole" is a loophole. Generally, the only thing that polls prove is how dismally dishonest the pollsters and how dismally ignorant the respondents are.


The "right to safety"? Where is that one codified? And if it's a right, somebody must be responsible for providing that safety; who is that, and how are they held responsible if they fail?

You know, the more I learn about the NYT, the more I have to wonder why anyone ever thought it's a quality newspaper, let alone the leading one in America.

It is amazing how to the gun-control crowd, all guns are "high-powered". The four guns used were two 12 gauge shotguns and two 9mm guns. The 9mm is a pistol round, of only moderate power. But the NYT never lets facts get in the way.

the Browning Hi-Power pistol which is a 9mm.

... like the FN Browning 1910 and 1922, which were chambered in .32 ACP (7.65x17mm), the Hi-Power was high powered.

shivering in fear, waiting for the Black Helicopters to land.

sitting by me in a lock box is a 9mm S&W Model 940 with a 3" barrel.

"High-powered" versus "rimfire". Basically the difference between high-chamber-pressure centerfire shooting and low-chamber-pressure rimfire shooting.

an assault weapon?

So we had no firearms that were "civilianized" versions of current or former military guns. We had a pump-action shotgun, a break-action double-barreled shotgun, a semi-automatic pistol-caliber carbine, and a semi-automatic pistol.

All four of them were bought by other people for the express purpose of bypassing state and federal law (a straw purchase). The two murders didn't buy them directly from any dealer at any gun show.

The TEC-9 was, sort of, kind of. The design was originally conceived as an inexpensive sub-machine gun, intended for government sales, but when it failed to sell, the company reworked it into a semi-automatic "handgun" for the American civilian market. The design underwent some changes, first to make it "not readily convertible" to fire on automatic, and then to comply with the 1994 AWB (by removing the shoulder thing that goes up barrel shroud and removing the threading on the barrel).

It's actually remarkable how often you come across Stevens 311s in the history of gun crime; the gun that Miller was arrested for possessing, ultimately giving rise to the SCOTUS' ruling in U.S. v. Miller, was also a sawed-off Stevens 311.

The Mini-14 was designed as a modern military weapon, too, but that didn't pan out. Fer example.


My former brother-in-law had two of them, a .410 model in pretty damn good shape given to him by his grandfather, and a rather beat-up 12-gauge model. Never failed to go off when you pulled the trigger.

Now the three long guns (The Carbine and the two shotguns) were purchased legally by then 18 year old Royln Anderson. She then transferred those weapons as gifts to the two perpetrators of the Columbine Massacre. Under then existing Colorado law, it was perfectly legal for her to buy the three weapons and then give them as a gift to the two minors. Now some people have called this a straw purchased, i.e. she bought the guns for the two perpetrators when it was illegal for the two perpetrators to buy the weapons themselves. She claimed she gave them as a gift (Which was legal) NOT that she purchased the three weapons for the perpetrators (Which would have been an illegal straw purchase). The state and federal government had NO evidence to show she did NOT buy the weapons with the intention to give them as a gift thus could NOT bring a straw purchase charge against her. The state had NO law against giving non-pistol firearms to minors as gifts, so her gift of the three weapons were legal under Colorado law.

Now you will find web sites on the net saying her purchase was an illegal straw purchase but the federal government decided NOT to charge her in exchange for her testimony in front of Congress. That sounds more like a rationalization then what really happened. She was not charged for she committed not crime that could be proved in court. Remember her buying the guns were legal, her gift of the guns to the perpetrators was legal. The whole transaction was only illegal if it could be shown that she, from the start, used money from the perpetrators to buy the weapons with the sole intention of getting the weapons to the perpetrators (i.e NO gift was ever intended or made, it was a simple straw purchase). Notice the buying of the weapons does NOT prove a straw purchase, nor her gift of them to the perpetrators. Those two transaction were legal UNLESS the Government can show it was all a sham. The Government could NOT show beyond a reasonable doubt that it was all a sham and thus decided to drop the whole case. And remember the intentions of the perpetrators is NOT the question, the issue is the BUYER'S intention.

Now, the fourth weapon used, the TEC-9 was purchased by another buyer NOT the fellow student. Since that was a pistol it had to go through a dealer AND the transaction recorded somewhere. The buyer of that pistil served time for his purchase of the pistol and for the subsequent transfer to the two perpetrators was illegal under Colorado law. Such a transfer of a PISTOL to a minor was illegal under Colorado law. IT was an easy case to prove and the buyer was convicted and served time.

Just a comment on how the four firearms ended up in the hands of the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre. Given that 95% of all gun crimes involve pistols the difference in treatment makes perfect sense (Even today 60% of all firearms purchased are rifles and shotguns, and as one bureaucrat told me years ago, why waste his time registering firearms that will almost never be used in a crime, when he can spend his whole day just on pistols, 40% of the weapons sold And used in 95% of the Crime involving firearms).

NRA site that gives a detail as to the how the weapons were obtained:
http://old.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel101200.shtml

There are other web sites, less right wing but all try to make what Roblyn Anderson did a straw purchase when she was NEVER charged with that crime.

According to the Dave Kopel piece you linked to (note, by the way, that the NRO--National Review Online--is not the same as the NRA),

If the money used to purchase the guns was Dylan & Klebold's, it was a straw purchase. Ms Anderson may have evaded prosecution, but by her own words (assuming that quote is correct), her actions were illegal.

Boy , they ALMOST had her !


//////
"Robyn Anderson, 18-year old Columbine student and old friend of Dylan Klebold's, made a straw purchase of two shotguns and a rifle for Klebold, in violation of the Gun Control Act of 1968. Anderson was never charged for her part in the straw purchase in exchange for her cooperation with the investigation that followed the shootings. After illegally acquiring the weapons, Harris and Klebold sawed off the barrels of the shotguns, an act that is a felony under the National Firearms Act."
/////

in their last conversation that the then-pending CCW legislation in Colorado should be opposed?













You think it was for the same reasons?

Maybe he foresaw to which extent the sequels would suck and wanted to spare as many people as possible the disappointment.

Well, it makes as much sense as dragging Rammstein or Marilyn Manson into it.

"Few know that Dylan Klebold, one of the two Columbine killers, was closely following Colorado legislation that would have let citizens carry a concealed handgun. Klebold strongly opposed the legislation and openly talked about it."

http://gunowners.org/op0814.htm

I don't know where Lott got his info, perhaps from the police interview of the parents. It's out there, too.