re: #124 dragonath

First Commenter:

Where’s Vicious Babushka when you need her?

Go easy on guns.com. Some of their commentators are loons, but the articles themselves are sane and informative. And not always things that reflect well on the pro-gun community:

How scrupulous are gun dealers in the Dallas/Fort Worth area when it comes to potential straw purchasers?

Answer: not very, if we are to accept the findings of a local news affiliate’s ‘I-team’ report, which following an undercover investigation found that almost half of the gun shops tested were willing to sell a firearm to someone who indicated he/she was not the actual buyer and that he/she might be selling it to someone who could not pass a criminal background check.

he CBS 11 I-Team, consisting of Investigative Journalist Mireya Villarreal and her photographer Mike Lozano, went to a total of 11 gun stores and pawn shops and at each store “would handle the gun to make sure the clerk knew exactly who’d be using it once we walked out.”

After talking with the clerk, one of the two would intimate that he/she may not be able to pass a background check and then ask if the other could purchase the gun instead, which is the essence of a straw purchase.

At six of the locations, the clerk behind the counter told the I-Team to get lost. However, at five of the stores — Cash America Pawn Shop in North Dallas, A Action Pawn Shop in Irving, Cheaper Than Dirt Outdoor Adventures in Fort Worth, Uncle Dan’s Pawn Shop in Dallas, Doc Holiday’s Pawn Shop in Fort Worth — the clerk agreed to sell the gun.

Pajamas Media would never have published this piece, but guns.com publishes the story instead of engaging in denialism. And their last paragraph is spot-on:

So, the answer is not creating new laws but enforcing the existing laws that are already on the books and holding unscrupulous gun store owners and clerks accountable. To that latter point, while it’s possible that these were isolated incidents that misrepresent the vast majority of gun dealers and pawn shops, at least in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, it’s also possible that this is indicative of a larger trend. Whatever the case may be, the gun community should not take this report lightly. This feckless behavior makes us all look bad and is exactly the type of thing that gun control advocates pounce on and use to push for tougher and more restrictive gun laws.