Criminals and straw purchases

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I agree 100%. However if you REALLY have a bad feeling it would not be discriminatory. I didn't say don't sell to Hispanics. And as I said if they come back in 3 days they were likely a legitimate buyer so make the sale and sleep well that night.
I am not an FFL so maybe I'm off base here but I'm not suggesting that we discriminate.
 
Wasn't there recently one woman that had like twenty charges for this or something like that. I believe I heard about that somewhere but I am not absolutely sure on that one.


Edit I tried looking it up but can't find it.

It was the woman who bought the guns for a particular gang who used a couple at a night club called blue in Florida.
 
And as I said if they come back in 3 days they were likely a legitimate buyer so make the sale and sleep well that night.
I am not an FFL so maybe I'm off base here but I'm not suggesting that we discriminate.

Or they decide that impulse purchase isnt worth the drive to come back, or get busy and forget, or simply go to one of the dozens of your competitors......

I just recently let my FFL expire, and as a small time dealer for 15 years I , fortunately, never had a buyer that REALLY gave me pause. There where times when "be backs" didnt come back, and I was fine with it.

My philosophy was pretty much, " if your BGC is clean and your cash is green, "
I made the sale.
 
Most often it a girlfriend making the straw purchase. The real problem is that the Feds will not prosecute the one making the straw purchase. They don’t want to waste the time and money to put someone in prison for just one year.

This is a perfect example;

The girlfriend of the worker that killed three people and wounded 14 others at the Excel plant in Hesston, Kansas brought the guns he used. Sarah Hopkins brought the guns from a out-of-state dealer and later redeemed them from pawn shop and gave them to the shooter.

Sarah Hopkins, was placed on a year’s probation for supplying him with the guns after she pleaded guilty in federal court to not alerting authorities that a convicted felon unlawfully possessed firearms.

She was directly responsible for the murders by giving the shooter the guns he used yet she walked out of the Courtroom a free person.
 
I have stopped sales cold! Absolutely will shut one down IF they show or tell obvious grounds to deny the transaction. If I stopped a sale for no reportable reason other than a gut feeling I’d have trouble keeping the job. My barber/FFL does a similar thing to what you said you might do but he’s the owner. I’m just a lowly employee...
 
To me, this just shows that background checks are next to useless and should be abolished. They are not accomplishing anything but adding an extra barrier to gun ownership and adding hassle for those whose name is similar to a felon. It is typical of BigGov to add more layers of regulation and then fail to enforce it.
 
I think you'd see a lot less straw purchases if the penalty is 10 years in a federal prison and a $50,000 fine if it is used in a felony and half that if it is not used but they are still caught. The lawmakers continue to try to take away the rights of the law-abiding citizens and let the actual criminals walk (as mentioned above). What is wrong with this picture?

You can set the penalty to anything you want, it's the enforcement that will never happen. Look at the statistics of people who fail current background checks, have blatantly lied on the 4473, and are NOT prosecuted.
 
You can set the penalty to anything you want, it's the enforcement that will never happen. Look at the statistics of people who fail current background checks, have blatantly lied on the 4473, and are NOT prosecuted.

Correct. As has been mentioned, no one wants to prosecute a case where they don't get meaningful punishment. Make it a federal, mandatory penalty, not a slap on the wrist, no jail time, short probation waste of time. Mandatory jail time and a mandatory large fine would deter a lot more people. Mom may not want to spend 10 years in jail because her son begged her to buy him a gun. Same with baby's momma or cuz. Enforce the laws we do have and put teeth into them. A $500 fine and a year probation does not deter anybody around the criminal element especially if they pay them $100 to do it.
 
Straw purchases are illegal. Making more laws doesn't cut down on straw purchases. They are obviously willing to break the first law so why not the second law?
But ... but ... you are trying to apply Logic and Intelligence to this. We are discussing Gun Laws here so ... Apples & Oranges, dontchaknow. :)
 
Remember the case in Chicago 2 or 3 years ago where a guy was arrested for making scores of straw purchases for criminals, then was just given probation because he had no criminal record. :mad:
 
Remember the case in Chicago 2 or 3 years ago where a guy was arrested for making scores of straw purchases for criminals, then was just given probation because he had no criminal record.
This is why it has to be a federal felony with a minimum mandated penalty and fine. Places like Chicago can't be bothered in trying to stop straw purchases when their goal is total gun bans. Ban all guns and, of course, there won't be straw purchases because we all know the criminals obey the laws.
 
I work at a store that is predominately in a highly Hispanic area. The thing that gets me is that those with Permanent Residence status can buy Firearms.
Why not?
1. They are in the U.S. legally.
2. Our Constitution and Bill of Rights applies equally.
3. Who else do you think should be denied God given rights?




Especially when what they “happen” to want is a 1911 in the 38 Super round. For those here that don’t know this, 38 Super is a legal round south of the border.
For the record, 9x19 & .357magnum are also legal calibers to possess.
And Lord help gun dealers everywhere when customers want to buy guns and calibers they are familiar with or that their fathers or grandfathers owned.


45 ACP isn’t because the military and police use it down there.
It's not solely because those are calibers used by military and police...…….40S&W and .41magnum are not legal for a civilian to possess.
And the Mexican police and military largely carry 9x19mm.

If they come correct, they can buy the gun, regardless of what we may know is probably going to happen with the gun.
Hmmmm……...If I'm buying guns and ammo for the cartel, do I:
1. Buy a Colt 1911 in .38 Super
or
2. Buy any of a hundred different 9x19 semiautomatics for a heck of a lot less than a Colt.
 
The elephant in the room on this topic is all the people that DO try and buy a gun legally from a FFL and are turned away just to walk out the door.
Those of us that have spent enough time at LGS have undoubtedly seen this. And what, these people just walk out the door having just committed a felony.
Until you can curtail THAT easy to catch problem it's best you leave things like straw purchases alone.
Fix what's fixable first then we can work on the harder ones.

Having been in the retail gun business in multiple pawn shops in multiple counties in South Florida I can tell you that in the 90's in Dade County any felon who pawned or sold a gun was going to be picked up and jailed. I've testified in Federal Court against enough of them. As for non-approved people who are denied, unless they appeal and the denial stands there can't be any arrest and prosecution because a significant percentage of the denials turn into approvals upon appeal. Bad data in the computer, name similar to a real bad guy's name, etc. all are things that happen. The flip is true also, data not being entered correctly or at all and a bad guy is approved.
Before more laws are passed, can't we just see that the ones we have in place are being applied and working before we go mucking it all up even more?
 
Maybe it is not as big of problem as the Fake News would like for you to believe.

Not everything is fake news. If you go to Cabelas in St. Louis there are a lot of women buying guns and a lot of men that reek like pot with their pants around their ankles doing the shopping.
 
So women in St. Louis should not buy guns on their own.

Pot smokers are disqualified due to using illegal drugs which is not a straw purchase.

Type of buyers at one gun store does not mean a nation wide epidemic.

Accurate, this is just anecdotal observation based on my life experience. However the DOJ and various other news sources confirm this idea. Guns used in crimes are either purchased legally or stolen from legal users. There is no other way they get to where they are.
 
Guns used in crimes are either purchased legally or stolen from legal users. There is no other way they get to where they are.

Or how about being purchased on the black market which doesn’t necessarily mean the gun is hot (stolen or illegal). It most likely mean the buyer is a prohibited person which is not a straw purchase.

Another reason is the buyer has a immediate need that places them in more danger by going through legal channels (such as waiting periods) when someone is making threats to harm them. (Battered women for example).

Quit believing the big lie.
 
Correct. As has been mentioned, no one wants to prosecute a case where they don't get meaningful punishment. Make it a federal, mandatory penalty, not a slap on the wrist, no jail time, short probation waste of time. Mandatory jail time and a mandatory large fine would deter a lot more people. Mom may not want to spend 10 years in jail because her son begged her to buy him a gun. Same with baby's momma or cuz. Enforce the laws we do have and put teeth into them. A $500 fine and a year probation does not deter anybody around the criminal element especially if they pay them $100 to do it.

Perhaps this is more of the problem. Fight the small fights and you'll prevent the big ones.
 
Germane here is that not all straw purchases are A to B.
Rather more than a few are A, then B, then C, then D.
A may not have actually made a straw purchas from an FFL, but then later trades/sells/lends it to B. B's possession is probably illegal, but A did not buy directly for B.
When B moves the thing down the chain, each sale and possession is generally illegal, but, beyond tracing.
Probably no way to stop this, even with more new laws.
And, really, none of this was illegal in 1968, and somehow our nation survived for 175 years without it.
 
Not a tremendous fan of Cook's research work in other publications but this study is interesting because it asked criminals in Cook County jail how they got their weapons. https://www.scribd.com/doc/276724037/Preventive-Medicine-University-of-Chicago-gun-study-August-2015 I would not pay as much attention to the actual numbers but more to the quotes from interviews. (For example, I believe that the number of respondents reporting that they got their guns through theft, based on other studies that indicate a much greater percentage, is ridiculously low but then again you are asking survey respondents to admit directly to an additional criminal act).

This findings from another article also shed some light on Chicago's problems with criminals and firearms https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-gun-network-study-northwestern-20180522-story.html, also reported here "A recent study of 188,338 people who had been arrested in Chicago over 7½ years found that they could easily get an illegal gun from a friend of a friend, or from someone who knew that friend of a friend. It was even easier if they were members of a gang, which reduces the distance to the closest illegal gun by about 27 percent." https://chicago.suntimes.com/opinio...ty-study-illegal-guns-handshake-gun-violence/ It is summarized a bit more in this https://www.thetrace.org/rounds/chicago-illegal-gun-study-network-analysis/ and despite the Trace antigun stance (funded by Bloomberg) appears to be a non-politicized summary of the research (actual article is behind a paywall here https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11524-018-0259-1).

Dr. Papachristos, has done significant work applying network analysis to crimes in Chicago and this study also indicates the importance of more or less a criminal subcultural network that facilitates committing crimes. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3531351/
 
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