Craig: We've just heard an explanation on why we should change a law on gun commerce. My contention is that there is no loophole. Gunshows are in fact a mirror image of commerce in this country. Individuals can sell a firearm without an FFL. They only need one if they are doing it for business. Under this amendment, they are suggesting this should magically change inside gunshows. Let me set the record straight, we are setting a whole new set of fed regulations against a legal trade. Annually, some 4 million people attend gunshows. I've attended numerous gunshows, you can see an example here. They provide an opportunity for people looking to learn, or buy and sell guns and related materials. Right now if you are buying and selling like this for a living, you have to have an FFL. If you are an individual collector, you don't make a living doing this. You can still go to a gunshow, get a table, and sell a couple guns. What they fail to say is that in the back streets, we'd love to license black markets, but we can't. Reed acknowledged that the vast majority of goers are law-abiding citizens. People can simply set up right outside a gunshow and sell without problems. Gun rights groups frequently set up booths in gunshows. Therefore, gunshows are an important part of our political process. It is estimated that more than a thousand commercial gunshows are held in this country. Gunshows today are regulated by state laws.
Let us talk about statistics. In the mid 80's, an NIJ study found that gunshows are such a tiny source of crime guns, that they weren't even worth reporting. In 1997 the NIJ put the number of crime guns from gunshows at 2%. 1.7% of prison inmates said they used a weapon from a gunshow. Less than 1% of crime guns are from gunshows, after a 2001 study of 18,000 criminals.