- Getting Machine Guns At The Gun Show

Here is the always impressive Kevin Williamson vigorously trashing the falsehood that you can walk into a gun show and buy yourself a fully automatic assault weapon:

It is not easy for a U.S. civilian to legally possess a “fully automatic assault rifle,” or any fully automatic firearm at all. If that civilian is not a federally licensed firearms dealer, owning a fully automatic weapon manufactured after 1986 is categorically illegal; fully automatic weapons that were legally owned and registered with the federal government before 1986 may be transferred to a qualified buyer with the approval of federal and local law-enforcement authorities, a rigorous background check, and, of course, a sign-off from the U.S. Treasury Department: there’s a couple hundred bucks in fees and taxes involved. (You may examine the application here.) Selling a fully automatic weapon to an unlicensed party, at a gun show or anywhere else, is a very excellent way to land yourself in prison for a good long while. Mr. Gadahn, and the editors of the New York Daily News, are full of it.

And in the process he also details some of the often repeated media falsehoods about gun shows and the gun show loophole:


So, no, the nation is not covered up with fully automatic assault rifles bought at gun shows.

That is also because, as it must be repeated for the 10,000th time, there is no gun-show loophole. If you are not in the business of selling firearms for a living, you do not have to have a federal license permitting you to sell firearms for a living. If Uncle Bubba gives up hunting and wants to swap his deer rifle to Otis for $100 and a case of Bud, Uncle Bubba does not have to register with Washington, D.C., or perform a background check on Otis. That is true whether the transaction happens at a gun show or in Uncle Bubba’s back yard. If you are a gun dealer at a gun show, the usual rules apply. If you are not a gun dealer, they don’t. Similarly, you can sell your car without incorporating as a car dealership.


The rest of his flawless argued view can be found here:

Al-Qaeda Boosts Bloomberg’s Antigun Campaign

As you would expect, I absolutely agree with every word of it.