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Gun Shows Are Hot in Florida
Bucks for the Bang: The election of Barack Obama has been a boon for gun dealers, and with more than 200 gun shows a year, few markets are hotter than Florida.
Loopholes?
Gun shows draw controversy because of the so-called “gun show loophole,” a belief that gun buyers at shows aren’t subject to background checks and that sellers are free from government-required record keeping.
Florida’s Gun Restrictions » Buyers must be 18 to purchase a » The waiting period — which doesn’t apply to concealed weapons permit carriers — is three days or five days, depending on the county. » Many large urban counties such as Miami-Dade and Orange require that private sellers check out the background of buyers, usually by paying a licensed dealer to run a background check. |
“There is no gun show loophole,” says promoter Bill Page. He’s right in the sense that what’s legal or illegal at a gun show is legal or illegal in the larger market. Licensed dealers — who make up most of Florida gun show sellers — conduct the same background checks and record keeping at gun shows that they do in their stores. (The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which takes calls every day but Christmas and New Year’s, doesn’t track gun show checks compared to store checks. It has run 3.5 million checks on purchasers overall since 1997.)
The issue for gun control advocates is gun show private sellers, defined by federal law as people who aren’t “engaged in the business.” They can sell without running background checks, whether at gun shows or through classified ads or yard sales. Some are hobbyists, for whom the exemption was created, but others are just unlicensed gun dealers taking advantage. In either case, “the No. 1 problem with gun shows is sales without checks,” says attorney Brian Siebel of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
Advocates for more regulation say gun shows are “hot spots” offering criminals easy access to a range of private sellers and dealers who can be hoodwinked by surrogate purchasers, called straw purchasers, or who simply are indifferent. Supporters and detractors of shows each have data to back them. For control advocates, a government study estimated that 31% of all trafficked guns in the nation came through gun shows and flea markets. At shows, the study found, private sellers, corrupt licensed dealers and dealers selling to straw purchasers sold firearms — from pistols to machine guns — to people who shouldn’t have them.
But a 2000 ATF study found that criminals are much more likely to simply steal weapons than buy them at gun shows and flea markets. Most armed criminals carry stolen guns; only 2% of inmates locked up on gun-related charges got their weapon at a gun show, according to one study.
A student of gun shows, California professor Garen Wintemute surreptitiously visited more than 70 guns shows across the country. He observed anonymous transfers through “private sellers” and obvious straw purchases. In Tampa, he watched as a man selected an SKS assault rifle with a bayonet and a 30-round magazine at a licensed dealer. The man then moved about 15 feet away while a female friend completed the paperwork and background check. The man asked the dealer about the appropriate case for it and ammo while the processing went on and then, when the deal closed, took possession and picked out a case and ammo.
