Online gun sales are slow in a Trump-related slump
4th September 2018 · 0 Comments
By Susan Buchanan
Contributing Writer
More people are shopping online, and they can buy guns there. In Louisiana, someone purchasing a gun on a computer through an unlicensed vendor can avoid a background check. Other states are more stringent, however. Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence has rated Louisiana poorly for its firearms laws.
Nationally, several, high-profile crimes have involved guns bought on the net. But that doesn’t mean online sales have surged. U.S. sales of firearms have declined overall since Donald Trump was elected. His administration is perceived as soft on guns, and the nation’s firearms sales are strongest when users fear that more restrictions are coming.
In a study early last year in the Annals of Internal Medicine by researchers at Northeastern and Harvard universities, the Internet accounted for only 2.4 percent of all guns purchased nationally in the two previous years. Physical stores, followed by friends and acquaintances, were the main suppliers.
It isn’t hard to find a gun online. Buyers can go to the site armslist.com, check a box for “private party” vendors, and order a gun from an unlicensed seller who might be a collector or hobbyist. Two United States Air Force Academy grads, Jon Gibbon and Brian Mancini, founded armslist.com in 2007 after Craigslist stopped selling guns.
In Louisiana, a gun purchased from one of armslist’s private parties can be delivered to a buyer without a background check. Under a loophole in the federal requirement for checks, unlicensed vendors don’t have to do background checks in the Pelican State and certain other states. But vendors do have to ask buyers their ages under state laws to make sure they aren’t too young.
Nineteen states require unlicensed sellers to do background checks on some or all gun buyers, according to the California-based Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
In the hodgepodge of laws, eight states—California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Washington—along with DC, require licensed and unlicensed vendors to do background checks at point of sale. Nevada’s background check law, enacted by voters in 2016, hasn’t been implemented yet. Maryland and Pennsylvania require point-of-sale background checks for all handguns. In Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts and New Jersey, all gun buyers must obtain a permit, issued after a background check, to buy a firearm. Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska and North Carolina have a permit and background check requirement for handgun purchases.
States that require background checks on all firearms sales have lower gun deaths than those that don’t. In a February scorecard correlating state laws and gun violence, Giffords ranked Louisiana 43rd among states and gave it a grade of F. Louisiana was third highest in gun deaths, after Alaska and Alabama.
Do criminals look for guns on the net? Sometimes, but they prefer informal channels. “The vast majority of gang members get their guns on the street, not on the Internet,” Christian Bolden, associate professor of criminology at Loyola University New Orleans, said last week. “Gang members aren’t spending a lot of time online. Guns are plentiful,” and they can be easier to buy than illegal drugs, he said.
Peter Scharf, a criminologist and adjunct professor at LSU’s School of Public Health in New Orleans, said based on his research criminals and gang members in the Big Easy get their guns from acquaintances, sellers on the street and through break-ins. “Someone robs a house in Metairie, steals a gun, and a few days later it’s involved in a crime in New Orleans,” he said.
Scharf also said young, local thugs buy guns mainly because their peers have them. “In a dispute without guns, someone gets a bloody nose,” he said. “In a similar dispute with a gun, someone’s killed and whole families are affected for years.”
At brick-and-mortar vendors that also sell online, customers pick up purchases made on their computer at a company store. Guns bought from licensed dealers online aren’t mailed to homes. And whether a purchase is made in a store or online from a licensed vendor, the buyer has to provide personal data on a 4473 form to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The store makes a phone call to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System or NICS.
“If you buy a gun from a licensed dealer, you fill out a 4473 background form, no exceptions,” said Tom Mincher, owner of American Hunter Gun & Archery Shop in Covington. “If a gun comes here to us from an online order, the buyer has to fill out a 4473 form.”
And he said, “if I sell a gun to someone in another state, it has to be sent to a dealer that has a Federal Firearms License. When the customer picks it up, they fill out a 4473.”
During the gun industry’s Trump slump, the number of background checks through the NICS fell to 25.2 million last year from 27.5 million in 2016. This year checks are up a bit, however.
Some of the biggest online vendors don’t sell guns there. Amazon, headquartered in Seattle, doesn’t sell firearms, or ammunition for pistols and rifles, or 3D gun blueprints, according to information from Amazon representative Saige Kolpack. Depending on local laws, it does sell airsoft guns, BB guns, pellet guns, paintball guns, and air rifles that are marketed as air or spring driven.
At Arkansas-based Walmart, “we do not now and have never sold guns online,” company spokesman Ravi Jariwala said. Walmart sells hunting and sporting firearms and ammunition in stores, but only at its locations that are licensed for such sales in compliance with federal and state laws.
Meanwhile, people are making their own guns, using 3D printers. A federal judge in Washington state last week extended a court order blocking Defense Distributed, a Texas company, from posting designs for 3D-printed guns on the Internet. Since these plastic guns don’t have serial numbers, the authorities have trouble tracing them.
Financially, it’s been a tough year for the nation’s gun industry. Shares in Massachusetts maker American Outdoor Brands, traded on NASDAQ, dropped to a four-year low in August. Shares in Vista Outdoor Inc., producing guns and ammunition in Utah, have languished on the New York Stock Exchange since early last year. Stock in Connecticut firearm-maker Sturm, Ruger & Company is down from its peak five years ago on the NYSE.
North Carolina-based Remington Outdoor, one of the nation’s oldest gun makers, emerged from two months of bankruptcy protection in May.
For ethical reasons, especially following February’s shooting deaths of 17 students in Parkland, Florida, some investors are selling their stock in gun companies.
This article originally published in the September 3, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
