The Business of Guns

1994 saw the passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.

had to submit photographs and fingerprints to get a license to sell guns. These two acts caused the number of licensed American gun dealers to plummet. Gun dealers with federal licenses should, in theory, be subject to oversight and government compliance. For example, federal law requires a dealer to report the theft of any gun within 48 hours. In practice, however, understaffing and underfunding of the ATF allow many to slip through the cracks. The ATF may only conduct a single unannounced inspection per dealer per year. Furthermore, a firearm law violation is not necessarily a felony (as selling a gun without a license often is), but rather a

Chapter 2: Retailers

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