Can Americans Buy 'Whatever You Want' Without a Background Check at a Gun Show?
Background checks are not required if the sale is performed by a private seller, but they are required when purchasing a gun from a federally licensed dealer.
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During a speech detailing his plans for new gun control actions, President Joe Biden said, “Most people don’t know: If you walk into a store and you buy a gun, you have a background check. But you go to a gun show, you can buy whatever you want and no background check.”
This claim is untrue. While critics discuss a so-called “gun control loophole,” the phrase is an overgeneralization of what current law actually states. Section 922 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code outlines the law surrounding the import, export, and sale of firearms, and requires background checks to be performed when a sale is made by a federally licensed firearm vendor. Currently, background checks are not required if the sale is performed by a private seller. The setting of the sale does not matter: background checks are required when purchasing a gun from a federally licensed firearm dealer at a gun show just as they are at a store. Likewise, a private seller need not perform a background check on an individual to whom they’re selling a gun at a gun show or anywhere else.
During a press briefing later in the day, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated in a “clarification” that Biden did not actually believe what he said, and that “he believes that background checks should be universal.” She did not address why Biden made the false claim in his remarks.
If you have a claim you would like to see us fact check, please send us an email at factcheck@thedispatch.com. If you would like to suggest a correction to this piece or any other Dispatch article, please email corrections@thedispatch.com.
The Jim Crow thing was a big enough an exaggeration as to count as a lie. This one not so much.
I don’t know, for sure, so please correct me if I’m wrong, but I imagine that most gun shows have a decent number of private sellers. I imagine that the law provides a decent incentive for small-time gun merchants to not get a federal license.
If there a lot of private sellers selling a lot of different guns at most gun shows, then what Biden said was true in every practical sense, even if he wasn’t precise about the legal loophole created the situation.
This is a great fact check, Alec! It's absolutely correct that a purchaser of a firearm from a FFL at a gun show must do a background check. The "loophole" is that individuals that go to gun shows often buy and sell firearms to other private sellers doing the same thing at the gun shows. But this is the same as saying there is a "classified ad" loophole, or a "neighbor" loophole. Plus, there is basically no evidence whatsoever that violent criminals or mass murderers are purchasing firearms in this manner. What's crazy is that to "close" the loophole would require that every time a gun changes ownership, there would need to be a background check. How this would ever be enforced--until, perhaps, after a gun that was transferred without a purchaser's background check is used in a violent crime and collected as evidence--is beyond me. It's a non-existent problem seeking an unenforceable solution.