[C]onvicted drug traffickers, domestic abusers and others prohibited from purchasing firearms are able to buy guns online, a national gun control group’s report contends
Everytown for Gun Sense posted firearms for sale on the website armslist.com between July and October of last year. They discovered that one in 24 respondents whose identity they were able to confirm would be prohibited by federal law from buying the gun at a licensed dealer.
Federal law requires licensed gun dealers to obtain a background check prior to a sale and prohibits felons, domestic abusers and the severely mentally ill from purchasing guns. Private sales do not require background checks.
Using data scraped from armslist.com and two other websites where people can arrange offline gun sales, Everytown estimated that 3,000 firearms are offered up by Vermonters online annually.
In the 15 years since federal background checks were required for sales by licensed gun dealers, 3,000 people were denied a purchase. The number of denials has declined over time, according to Everytown’s analysis of FBI data.
The number of denials in 2013 was 248 out of 36,135, or 0.69 percent, compared to the 4 percent (one in 24) of prohibited buyers who responded to the group’s armslist.com ads.
“Above and beyond the absolute number of criminals seeking guns online, the high concentration of prohibited buyers is further evidence that criminals may be knowingly flocking to unlicensed sales in order to evade background checks elsewhere,” the report states.
Among the prohibited buyers Everytown found looking to buy guns online were a convicted drug trafficker from central Vermont with a history of making violent threats with firearms; a twice convicted cocaine dealer in Bennington; a fugitive from justice and domestic abuser in St. Albans; and a man in Huntington who attacked his wife and threatened to kill her. Others had less serious criminal histories, including bench warrants or violations of protection orders.
Everytown evolved from Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the brainchild of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The group did a similar study and report in Washington state. They’ve joined the group Gun Sense Vermont in pushing for universal background check legislation here as well. Everytown has placed ads supporting stricter gun laws in several Vermont media outlets, including vtdigger.org.
A trio of top Democrats in the Senate are expected to release a bill that would require background checks for all gun sales. It would also allow state-level prosecutors to enforce federal firearm possession laws and require Vermont to report the names of people with mental illness whom a judge has ruled are a danger to themselves or others to the National Instant Background Checks System (NICS) — the database used to check if someone is able to purchase a gun.
Vermont’s gun lobby is likely to oppose any new gun legislation, and Sen. Dick Sears, D-Bennington, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has voiced opposition to expanding background checks as well.
Gov. Peter Shumlin said this week at a news conference that Vermont doesn’t need new gun laws, calling them a “solution in search of a problem” — a line frequently used by gun rights groups.
“A lot of folks aren’t going to agree with me on this one, but I think that we’ve got a lot of really important challenges to focus on in Vermont where we’re solving problems that are really affecting folks lives, and I’m going to spend my energy focusing on those issues,” Shumlin said.
“I don’t think Vermont’s gun laws are our problem, I just don’t,” he added.
