Advocates push bill for universal gun-show background checks

In the video, a young man named Colin Goddard talks to a gun dealer at a Forest Lake gun show held last summer. The man at the table is an unlicensed gun dealer.

“OK, there’s no tax,” the dealer says. “There’s no paperwork. That’s worth something.” In moments, Goddard hands over $225, takes the semi-automatic pistol wrapped in a paper bag and walks out.

But this isn’t just any snarky YouTube posting - it’s a hidden camera video capturing a survivor of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting that left 32 dead buying a handgun in a way many people believe should be illegal - that is, without a background check.

(The video clip is the second segment listed on the following web page: http://www.bradycampaign.org/media/press/view/1196/. Goddard made the video for the Washington, D.C.-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.)

One might think that in blue-state Minnesota, buying a gun without a background check would be a crime.

One would be wrong.

While federally licensed gun dealers are required to run background checks before selling firearms at gun shows in Minnesota, unlicensed dealers are not.

So no law was broken during the Goddard video, as the dealer on the tape was not federally licensed-meaning he is exempt from Minnesota state statue 624.7132.

That Minnesota law requires gun dealers to report information about pistol and assault-rifle sales to the local police chief before the sale is completed, so that a background check on the purchaser can be performed. But only federally licensed dealers are required follow this law.

One of the people who’s working to change the law so that anyone buying a gun at a gun show would have to undergo a background check is Heather Martens.

This former journalist who became incensed by the 2003 passage in Minnesota of the conceal-and-carry law is now president of Citizens for a Safer Minnesota, a St. Paul-based anti-gun-violence advocacy group helping to promote and distribute the Goddard video (along with a consortium of other advocacy groups) under the banner Protect Minnesota.

“I got involved in this during the conceal-and-carry debate because I want my kids to grow up in a civilized society,” says the mother of two school-age kids. “All kids should be able to play outside without fear, not only mine.”

So Martens has been working the last several years to raise people’s awareness about what the issues and the laws involved really are.

“Most people support responsibility, most people support reasonable things like background checks on gun purchases, and they just have to speak up more. I think that’s fairly clear.”

It’s clearer than some might suspect - including the hardliners who run the National Rifle Association, who for years have pushed the idea that any legislation with a whiff of gun control was a move toward total gun control.

But last month, a conservative pollster, Frank Luntz, PhD, head of Alexandria, Va.-based The Word Doctors polling firm, released a survey in which NRA members said they support gun-show background checks - closing the so-called “gun-show loophole.”

Luntz and his firm did the national survey of 832 gun owners (401 NRA gun owners and 431 non-NRA gun owners) between Nov. 25 and Dec. 2, 2009, for Mayors Against Illegal Guns, an advocacy group founded in 2006 with just 11 members that now has more than 500, including both St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman and Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak.

The Luntz poll “confirms for me what I have long suspected … the overwhelming majority of gun owners I have spoken to support background checks before gun purchases because it is just common sense,” Martens says.

Gun owners “believe that the best way to defend the right to gun ownership is to support reasonable regulations to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. The gun lobby’s insistence on no regulation whatsoever actually undermines the cause of gun rights,” Martens adds.

And two Minnesota legislators are pushing legislation to close “the gun-show loophole” here.

Sen. Yvonne Prettner Solon, DFL-Duluth, authored a Senate bill earlier this year that would have closed the loophole. The bill would have required unlicensed dealers to follow the same background-check requirements that federally licensed dealers already must follow at gun shows.

“What is happening at these gun shows is that people are selling guns off on the side, and there are no records of them,” Prettner Solon says. “So there is no way to know who has the guns. There is no background check.”

Rep. Michael Paymar, DFL-St. Paul, authored the House version of that bill, but it got attached to an omnibus and was stricken.

While Prettner Solon says the budget crisis will probably prevent her from pushing the proposal again this year, Paymar plans to introduce a new version of the bill this session in the House Public Safety Policy and Oversight committee, of which he is a member.

“I just think that once we break through some of the myths about this bill, it should pass,” he says.

Stiff opposition

There was staunch opposition to last year’s legislation. The NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action blasted the bill in a mailing to members last March, calling it “yet another attempt to end private firearm transfers in Minnesota” and an attempt “to regulate the sale of firearms between all law-abiding persons, all across Minnesota.”

The bill would, the NRA statement said, create a de facto gun registration system “by requiring the records of all transfers to be maintained by the state, which would be made available to all authorities, including for use in ‘civil’ cases.”

It would also “remove the permit holder exemption from a background check and even increase the waiting period from five to seven days,” according to the NRA.

None of that is true, Paymar insists.

He acknowledges that there was a vague provision in the original bill that appeared to create a registration system, but it was stricken before the bill even went forward. It also would not remove the permit-holder exemption, he says, and would not increase any waiting period. There is no waiting period for gun-show purchases, he adds.

But such assurances don’t mollify critics. Jim Wright is owner of Blaine-based Crocodile Productions, a company that stages gun shows throughout Minnesota. He says that the law is a first step toward a universal ban on guns.

A new law makes no sense, Wright adds, given that hundreds of gun laws currently on the books go unenforced.

Paymar says his bill, patterned after a Colorado statute that passed after the Columbine school shooting, would extend that background check requirement to private sellers at gun shows.

Wright counters that such a system would be unworkable. Federally licensed dealers are allowed to run background checks only on people who intend to purchase firearms directly from them. It is against federal privacy laws, he says, for a licensed dealer to run a background check on behalf of any other seller.

No bans

Despite the opponents’ rhetoric, Martens says, the Prettner Solon-Paymar measure is not about banning guns.

But the law would help keep guns out of the hands of convicted felons, people who are restricted from owning firearms because of mental illness, and people who have been convicted of certain forms of domestic assault, she says.

Martens points to other polls that also show universal background checks have broad public support. A recent poll from Newport News, Va.-based Christopher Newport University indicates that 80 percent of likely voters in Virginia support requiring unlicensed dealers to perform background checks at gun shows.

A 2006 poll by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Survey Research showed that 82 percent of Minnesotans statewide favored uniform background checks for gun purchases, whether from licensed or unlicensed dealers.

Nothing in the Solon-Prettner Paymar proposal would prevent responsible citizens from owning guns, Martens says: “Most people who do own guns believe in responsibility with them. We want to emphasize that we are in agreement with that.”

Paymar argues that the NRA and other gun-rights advocates should step up to the table to work out a bill that they can live with.

“This is not a first step toward registration,” he says. “We’re not trying to ban guns. We respect people’s Second Amendment rights to have weapons for their own protection and for hunting. We’re just saying that the background check makes sense.”

2 Responses to “Advocates push bill for universal gun-show background checks”

1. Joan Says:
   January 8th, 2010 at 2:37 pm

   The article is great. I am one of the people working with Heather Martens on this bill. Colin Goddard is a survivor of the Virginia Tech shootings which didn’t make it into the article. He is a wondeful young man who was shot 4 times by Cho and wants to do something about gun violence. Kudos to him. This bill will not affect legal gun owners no matter what anybody says. When terrorists, domestic abusers, criminals and dangeroulsy mentally ill people can buy guns without background checks from unlicensed sellers, we have a problem. That problem is easily solved. The NRA is not representing its’ own members when they oppose measures such as this. Check out the polling numbers.

2. Daniel Schitkovitz Says:
   January 22nd, 2010 at 9:04 pm

   Pro 2nd Amendment and Pro national gun policy. I see no reason that any law abiding, safety concerned citizen would disagree with a policy that requires all firearms (handguns and long guns) from being registered and the owner(s) from being required to have training and a license. Granted, Guns don’t kill people any more than cars (more die from car related accidents though) or cell phones. People KILL people. People improperly trained or not at all. People who have no reason handling a weapon (as in children). The cause for death by a Firearm is not the firearm - it is the PERSON who owns it. Just as in the deaths from a car accident in most cases - it is the actions of the driver, not the car.

   I believe no one should be allowed to buy a handgun at a show unless they produce a valid carry conceal permit and a long gun unless they have a valid hunting license or gun registration permit.

   To make it fair to all and safer, it would be a better scenario if as I stated above, there was one set of laws for the whole nation. There should be one set of carry conceal laws nationwide and no state or town, or any other entity should be allowed to restrict your right to carry a weapon; where it is allowed by law. Prisons, and courthouses should pretty much be the only place they are not allowed; unless you are a member of a Federal, State, County or City police force. You’d still be required to be checked upon entry to the facility.

   One might wonder why I haven’t listed the Post Office, or schools. Why? Do we not yet realize, that you are not stopping the criminal element, but only stopping law abiding citizens. Law abiding citizens do not need to be worried about. Kids cannot own handguns and of course, the law would still state that no one enrolled in an elementary school or high school is allowed to bring a weapon into the building. Again, those that want to commit murder, will do so, laws or not.

   It appears that the real issue isn’t guns after all, it’s people don’t really trust people. Too many apparently feel that there are a lot of people that have firearms that shouldn’t. Fact still remains, you don’t disarm law abiding citizens and expect crime to drop. You don’t disarm law abiding citizens and create a safer environment.

   Requiring training of all gun owners, registration of all owners, and beginning training of safety and effects of firearms as early as Jr High School should be a requirement in the USA. All schools should teach safety and effects. Show films of what sort of devastation can be done with a .22, 9mm, .45 etc.. Have hands on training with safe weapons for High School age children beginning at age 16. Safe weapons, meaning no ammo, shooting with light beams. Upon safe completion they could graduate to blank round shooting; to get the feel of gun recoil. Never using live rounds. Students would be required to take the safety and effects classes and the hands on training would be elective classes.

   If you really want to make the USA safer, this is how you do it. Of course that is not all of it, just the basic premise.

   Sincerely, Daniel Schitkovitz
   Kirkland WA