Aside from the fact that the Brady’s link to few verifiable facts in their latest tirade against gun shows, we can point out at least a few problems:
Remember: unregulated gun show sales are how Eric Harris and Dylan Kleybold got their guns before they murdered 12 and wounded 22 others at Columbine High School.
I know you guys aren’t going to believe this, but the Brady’s statement here is is completely misleading.
Several months before the Columbine massacre, the killers obtained firearms from two suppliers. The first was a 2-year-old Columbine graduate named Mark Manes (ironically, the son of a longtime Handgun Control, Inc., activist). Manes bought a pistol at a gun show and gave it to the two killers (who were under 18 at the time).
Colorado law prohibits giving handguns to juveniles, with certain exceptions, and Manes is currently serving time for this offense in a Colorado prison. The second supplier was an 18-year-old fellow student at Columbine, Robyn Anderson, who bought three long guns for the killers at a Denver-area gun show in December 1998.
Both Manes and Anderson were lawful gun purchasers and could legally have bought the guns from a firearms dealer at a gun store, a gun show, or anywhere else.
What the Brady’s want to do here is to villainize gun shows, which, because none of us can buy firearms over the Internet, are really the only way people can generally find what they are looking for without going to 20 different gun stores. At least 1/3rd of my collection was purchased at a gun show. The private sale issue has nothing to do with gun shows, and they know it.
… bought an arsenal of his own, “including a Sten submachine gun, a Ruger Mini-14 rifle, two pistols and a hunting rifle.â€
No one is buying off the books unregulated submachine guns anywhere and not violating some very serious federal laws. They know that too.
Perhaps the STEN was a legal reproduction with a 16-inch barrel. Or the stock was removed and replaced with a standard grip. Similar to those modern Thompsons.
Or it was AirSoft…
I go to lots of gun shows, and seek out private sellers for my own collection. Never once have I seen an arsenal for sale as described by the Brady bunch. Never once have I seen a private seller with a table full of AK47’s or AR15’s or even a table full of handguns It’s almost always a mixed set of guns, almost always qualifying a C&R types, most of the time just a few hunting and plinking style rifles.
But I did get an Marlin 39 this weekend and that qualifies in some states as an assault weapon.
Same here. Most of the guys I see with the sale posts down the barrel have bolt action deer rifles, or old military bolt actions. I think most people who get AR’s tend to hold on to them.
I must go to the wrong gun shows.
The Brady bastards should put out a list of shows with all the evil stuff, like the legal $200 AK’s.