The Senate’s bipartisan gun control bill contains heightened penalties for firearm trafficking and straw purchases, although trafficked or straw purchased firearms were not used in Uvalde, Buffalo, Parkland, Las Vegas, or Orlando, among others.
Sections 932 and 033 contain the heightened straw purchase and gun trafficking penalties.
The straw purchase section (932)v says:
It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly purchase, or conspire to purchase, any firearm in or otherwise affecting interstate or foreign commerce for, on behalf of, or at the request or demand of any other person, knowing or having possible cause to believe that such other person” is prohibited from making the purchase for themselves.
Straw purchases were banned long before the Senate’s bipartisan agreement was announced.
ATF form 4473, the paper portion of a firearm purchase background check, uses question one to make clear that straw purchases are allowable.
Question one, form 4473, asks:
Are you the actual transferee/buyer of the firearm(s) listed on this form and any continuation sheet(s) (ATF Form 5300.9A)? Warning: You are not the actual transferee/buyer if you are acquiring the firearm(s) on behalf of another person. If you are not the actual transferee/buyer, the licensee cannot transfer the firearm(s) to you.
The trafficking section (933) of the Senate gun control deal is much the same, in that it presents a penalty for selling guns to individuals who are otherwise barred from having them.
Breitbart News has long kept a running tally of the high-profile mass shootings of the last 15 years, and every attacker but three got his guns via a background check. Two of the three who avoided background checks–the Clackamus Town Center attacker (December 11, 2012) and the Sandy Hook attacker (December 14, 2012)–stole their guns, so no amount of point-of-sale gun controls would have stopped them. One individual, the Midland, Texas, attacker (August 31, 2019), acquired his gun via a private sale.
Apart from those exceptions, high profile mass shooters over the past 15 years acquired their guns themselves, at retail, by complying with background checks. Heightened straw purchase rules or more anti-trafficking laws would not have prevented their attacks.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and a Turning Point USA Ambassador. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.