re: #223 Obdicut

Not to mention that the GOP is attempting to make noise about this while denying that the straw sales themselves are a problem. A lot of the reporting on this, like on Fox, has claimed the sales were illegal. They weren’t. That’s the whole point.

well, there is a problem with fuzzy definitions here, and its not on you. Straw sales ARE indeed illegal, on a federal level. the problem is that a straw sale is where someone pays for a firearm but has someone else go to the gun store and do the paperwork. a straw sale is not purchasing a firearm, doing the paperwork and then selling it later, that would be properly termed a private sale. To add further chaos, it appears the ATF asked the dealers to go ahead with multiple gun purchases, and purchases that seemed “shady” enough (although legal) that the dealers alerted the ATF. Most of the media has missed the very real problems coming to light about how easily the guns made it across the border (which goes back on HomeSec), and, then how easily they vanished from ATF/DoJ tracking. they fell right off the screen, and neither explanation for that is particularly attractive—either the guns were lost through incompetence, or the tracking mission was purposely abandoned.