It's not about prohibiting gun sales to law abiding citizens

It’s about prohibiting the sale of guns to drug dealers, the mentally ill and those with criminal backgrounds. The City of New York, under the authority of Mayor Michael Bloomberg - not exactly a ‘liberal’ - has mounted an undercover investigation of just how easy it is for anybody to buy weapons the same as the Tucson shooter, Jared Loughner, used.

This is simply outrageous. This isn’t about hunting or personal home/business protection. This is all about the blatant big business of selling illegal guns to dangerous people who intend to use them to inflict death and injury … often upon innocent citizens who are simply in their way. Don’t let the NRA tell you differently. They are bought and paid for by the firearms industry.

This ‘buy’ was at a Phoenix, Arizona gunshow just two weeks after the Tucson shooting.

The investigators were able to conduct similar buys at gunshows - including Crossroads of the West - in Ohio, Tennesee and Nevada. Yes, Nevada. They’ll be back in Reno on February 26 and 27, 2011.

Gun sellers are skirting the law by selling weapons as ‘private citizens’. According to laws, you cannot sell a gun, as a private citizen, to a buyer if you know that buyer is a felon or drug abuser. That’s nice. But how can you know? Well, if the prospective buyer tells you straight out ….

Just two weeks after the tragic shooting in Tucson, Arizona, private investigators went to a gun show in Phoenix, Arizona — one of thousands of such shows that occur across the country every year — to test two basic questions:

How easy is it to buy a gun without a background check?

• Answer: In a matter of minutes, an investigator purchased a Glock 9 millimeter and two high capacity magazines, similar to the weapon used by Jared Loughner, without background checks.

And, would unlicensed sellers sell guns to people who said they probably could not pass a background check?

• Answer: Yes. An undercover investigator purchased two 9 millimeter pistols from two different sellers, even after the investigator told the sellers that “I probably couldn’t pass a background check.”

Private gun sales, like those at gun shows, occur with no background checks, and provide a dangerous loophole that fuels the interstate and international market for illegal guns. These loopholes in our system make it too easy for dangerous people to get their hands on guns.

You can also watch videos from the 2009 Gun Show Undercover Investigation where 19 of 30 private sellers - 63% - broke the law by completing a sale to a buyer who they thought could not pass a background check: http://www.gunshowundercover2009.org.

Join other rational Americans who would like to see this loophole closed, and put us on the path to a safer country.