So-called crime guns have to come from somewhere. We know that criminals get them from things like black market gun sales or from stealing firearms. They might get them from family members or straw purchases.
But most aren't getting them from that last one. Yet a study seems to claim otherwise based on an idiotic premise, and two Democrats in New Mexico want to make it harder to conduct business because of it.
In particular, they want to mandate additional training and licensing for New Mexico gun stores, and they want to do it because of an Everytown "study":
Two New Mexico lawmakers say they plan to sponsor bills in the upcoming legislative session that would enact stricter regulations on firearm dealers like gun stores and pawn shops across the state.
State Rep. Andrea Romero (D-Santa Fe) and Sen. Heather Berghmans (D-Albuquerque) at a news conference Wednesday afternoon said they were alarmed by the findings of a new analysis of federal data on firearm trafficking. The report — published by Everytown for Gun Safety, a national organization that advocates for stricter gun laws — found that three out of four guns found at New Mexico crime scenes were originally sold by a firearm dealer.
The report, titled “The Supply Side of Violence: How Gun Dealers Fuel Firearm Trafficking,” urged legislative action to hold retailers to account for selling weapons that are later trafficked and used in crimes. Across New Mexico, in particular, it appears that most weapons recovered at crime scenes were trafficked, the report says. In nearly 90% of cases, someone other than the original purchaser possessed the gun used in a crime, an indication of a “straw purchasing,” in which someone legally buys a weapon and then sells it to someone who cannot legally purchase a gun or doesn’t want their name tied to the transaction.
The problem with this "indication" is that it's based on literally nothing except for the fact that anti-gunners just don't like gun stores.
See, every gun has to come from somewhere, and gun manufacturers don't sell guns directly to people. You can pay for them on their site, but it has to go through a Federal Firearms License holder before you can take possession of the firearm in question. This is federal law, and the only way you can get around having to send a gun to some FFL in your town is to have an FFL yourself.
When a gun is traced, what happens is the ATF reaches out to the manufacturer, who is required to keep records of what happened with every firearm, and then they provide the ATF with who they sent it to. The ATF then works its way down until it gets to the gun store that sold the firearm.
But the assumption is that if a gun was recovered by police in the possession of someone other than the original purchaser, it must have been a straw buy, without considering literally any other way a gun could have ended up there.
A firearm that is stolen, for example, will end up in someone else's hands. One that is sold in a face-to-face transfer in states where legal, particularly years down the road, is going to end up in someone else's hands. Literally every way that a criminal can come into possession of a firearm other than a straw purchase will yield the same results when the gun is traced.
It's part of why I've said for years now that the hype over "ghost guns" was ridiculous. While people made a big deal about tracing, gun tracing is very limited.
Now, though, Everytown is trying to use those limits to push a narrative that simply isn't supported by the supposed facts.
And these two leftist knobs are jumping all over the claims to push laws that will hurt law-abiding citizens and gun dealers, do nothing to curb criminal access to guns, and simply be another colossal waste of time.
You know, what Democrats are best at.