Gun shows and loopholes

I have been telling my liberal friends for a long time that there is no such thing as a "gun show loophole." Now I can show them that the good Professor Reynolds, a professor of constitutional law, also says so. Case closed.

I went to the Bob Pope gun show in Tennessee last year. It recurs twice per year and is the largest one in middle Tennessee, and maybe in the whole state. I like shooting sports, as my links at left confirm, but I found the gun show boring. There were almost no sporting arms. The new guns for sale by dealers (who were fairly few) were all field models, and I suppose a hunter would have been happy. But I don't hunt, I just bust targets.

Most guns for sale were collectors guns - muzzle loaders, historical guns such as WW I Mausers or Springfields, many of which were no longer functional. By far the majority of vendors (two-thirds at least) did not even sell guns. They sold hunting items, "surplus" military clothing, flags, some knives, boots, camping gear, etc.

I didn't see any foaming-mouth militia types; in fact, most visitors looked older than me. I also did not find any new-gun dealer there who would sell you a gun on the spot that you could walk away with. They did the background check over the phone, took a deposit, your name and number and said they'd call you when the gun came in. Every new gun I saw there was for display only. Collectors' guns could be bought and taken.

One thing Glenn Reynolds did not point out was that the federal government has the final say on whether you are a gun dealer or a private seller. If the government decides that the volume of sales you make is more than what a private seller would do, you're a dealer, and you'd better have your paperwork and licenses in order and comply with federal firearms laws governing sales and transfers. As I understand it, BATF decides on the basis of volume, not profit, profit motive or the lack thereof.