No, Straw Purchases Aren’t About to Become Easier

If it weren’t for hysterics, anti-gunners wouldn’t have anything at all to hang their hats on, I suppose.

I’m tired of it, but it’s just the cost of doing business these days. The ATF, which has been the anti-gun lobby’s lapdog for decades, is now acting in a manner to make life easier for law-abiding citizens, and the combination of losing ground and what is likely a sense of betrayal, because the law enforcement agency that jumped when the gun control lobby told them to is now ignoring their calls.

They’re going to be riled up.

As the ATF has announced new changes, these hysterical individuals are, in fact, being hysterical and engaged in the typical doomsaying, as is the way of their people.

Brady’s Kris Brown: “Sweeping structural changes” that will cost lives

“These are not technical adjustments — they are sweeping structural changes that will reshape how guns are bought and sold in America, a country where guns outnumber people,” Brady President Kris Brown whined in a news release announcing the comments.

“At a time when gun crime is falling and homicide has reached a 100-year low — thanks in part to effective firearm policies — these changes will reverse hard-won progress and cost lives. They will make it easier for prohibited purchasers to obtain guns, harder for law enforcement to solve and prosecute gun crimes, and even admittedly likely that so-called ‘mass casualty events’ take place in communities across the country.”

NSSF: The reforms don’t change who’s prohibited or legalize straw purchases

Of course, that naysaying couldn’t be further from the truth. As the National Shooting Sports Foundation explained when debunking similar claims by gun-hating U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Connecticut, the reforms ATF recently announced did not change who is (still) prohibited from lawfully possessing a firearm.

“They (still) do not legalize straw purchasing,” NSSF said. “They are a course correction after years of regulatory overreach by the Biden administration that too often treated lawful gun owners and firearm retailers as the problem instead of focusing federal law enforcement resources where they belong: combatting violent criminals, traffickers, straw purchasers and willful violators.”

It’s a common enough tactic, where you take the absolute least generous reading of a rule, twist it a bit further, and suddenly a rule that says something like, “Yeah, you’re going to have to be actually adjudicated as ‘mentally deficient’ by a court instead of some bureaucrat at the VA” now gets translated into crazy people getting guns.

And I find it hilarious that Brown is screaming about homicides being at a 100-year low when just last week she was screaming on X about an increase in shootings. Seems a little at odds, doesn’t it?

Nothing about the rules in question enables straw purchases. What is happening is that a system is now in place that will let me buy a gun from a gun store elsewhere in my state, such as my wife’s uncle’s place, which is a bit more of a drive than I’d really like to make to make a purchase. Now, a gun sale can happen online, and guns can be shipped to my home of record.

The truth is, as The Truth About Guns notes in the embedded link, something like 90 percent of the guns that end up in criminal hands aren’t from retail sources. Yes, there are some that are straw buys with the intention of selling them to criminal parties, but that’s happening now and is almost impossible to detect, especially when you look at what gun store personnel are told to look out for. It doesn’t follow the typical model of a straw buy.

While that might continue under the new rules, it’s not because the rules make it easier. It doesn’t make it the least bit easier.

But what we need to remember is that for gun control advocates, the goal isn’t to reduce the number of guns in criminal hands, but to reduce the number of guns in circulation. They don’t like that people like you and me buy guns at all, even if we’re law-abiding. They want to discourage us from exercising our Second Amendment rights.

Yes, they’ll run with the whole “streets will run red with blood” rhetoric, and when it doesn’t happen, they’ll pretend they never said it, just like they did following the Bruen decision. But the goal isn’t to stop crime so much as to stop you. 

Editor’s Note: President Trump and Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.

Help us continue to report on their efforts and legislative successes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.