The Business of Guns

party” designation allows countless exchanges to take place without law enforcement ever knowing about them. Only California and Rhode Island mandate background checks for all private gun sales, while 12 states mandate background checks for the private sale of handguns. Given the near impossibility of enforcing these mandates, however, countless violations occur, thanks to the anonymity of the Internet. One of the only caveats to the private-seller loophole, however, is that federal law prohibits the online sale of guns whenever an unlicensed dealer transfers a gun to a customer in another state: the buyer must instead ship the gun to a federally licensed dealer in the seller’s state of residence. In practice, however, many gun sales ignore this law, and the postal service itself will deliver unloaded long guns, but not handguns, between individuals in the same state without performing any further checks on the exchange (although FedEx will not ship a gun between two unlicensed individuals). The largest online gun site, Armslist.com, provides a case study for the wide online sales of guns in the United States. Armslist boasts a staggering two million annual posts for the sale of firearms, with a further half-million annual posts for knives, axes, and outdoor equipment. Of the two million posts for firearms, over three-quarters are from sellers who are not federally licensed gun dealers, while half have no requirement for a background check, including nearly 100,000 assault rifles offered for sale. Seven million visitors visit Armslist each month, where they can search for federally licensed dealers (who, by mandate, must conduct a background check) or private parties (who are under no obligation to conduct a background check). On a per-capita basis, Montana leads all states in the online sale of guns on Armslist without the requirement of a background check. Unlicensed dealers with firearms for sale are the largest category of all posts on the site. Armslist itself

The Business of Guns

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