During a January 5 speech in which President Obama introduced numerous executive gun controls, he falsely claimed that “a violent felon” can buy a gun online without a background check.
Online gun sales from a retailer require a background check just as certainly as in-person gun sales do. Breitbart News reported this on January 17, 2013, when President Obama and Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) were gearing up a control push in the wake of Sandy Hook.
If a citizen buys a gun from a store via the internet, that gun has to be shipped from a dealer with an Federal Firearms License (FFL) to another dealer with a FFL. Note–The gun cannot not even be shipped directly to the buyer. Rather, the dealer to whom the gun was mailed calls the buyer and the buyer then comes into the store to go through a background check before the gun is passed to him.
Here is how it works–If a resident of Denver bought a gun from a store in Tampa, the FFL in Tampa would send the gun to an FFL in Denver. Once it arrived, the buyer would pay a fee for shipping and pay taxes on the gun, as well as any mark-ups for services. He would also have to submit to a background check just as if he had bought the gun off the shelf in Denver.
But Obama sold his executive action to expand background checks by talking about individuals going into gun stores to buy a gun and juxtaposing that with a felon whom Obama claimed could get “the same exact weapon”–minus the background check–online.
The White House tweeted: “A violent felon can buy the exact same weapon over the internet with no background check.”
This is simply not true.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.