President Biden on Thursday described his actions against gun violence in a speech that inaccurately described three guns "loopholes" he sought to close.
"If you walk into a store and buy an arme on fire, you must check your background. But you go to a gun show, you can buy whatever you want and no background checks, ”he said, repeating a familiar refrain among supporters for more gun control.
It was overkill. Licensed gun dealers are required to search for potential buyers through a background check system before a sale is approved. Private sellers are not required to perform such background checks, and some do sell guns at gun shows . But that doesn't mean all gun show dealers are private or that all gun show sales forgo a background check.ents. Additionally, 16 states and Washington, DC have passed laws requiring universal background checks , including at exhibitions of firearms.
Although there is little recent data on the subject, a 1999 study from the Office of the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, revealed that half to three-quarters of vendors at gun shows were in fact licensed. A survey of gun owners published in 2017 in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that 22% of guns purchased at gun shows did not include a background check.
Mr. Biden also left out important context when he described the so-called Charleston Loophole.
"If the F.B.I. didn 't - didn ' t complete the background check within three days - there is a process - if it wasn 't done in three days, according to the Charleston Loophole, you can buy the gun, ”he said. "They bought the gun and killed a lot of innocent people.
It is true that if a background check is not performed within three working days a gun dealer can proceed with the sale.
In 2015, Dylann S. Roof, the white supremacist who killed nine black parishioners in anLisa from Charleston, bought a gun two months before the shoot. This purchase was authorized after the F.B.I. has not explicitly blocked the sale within three days.
While Mr. Roof admitted a drug offense a month before buying the gun, clerical errors prevented the FBI from seeing this admission in time and blocking the purchase of the weapon.
However, the office still had the power to refuse a purchase after the fact, and then refer the matter back to ATF officers to recover the 'weapon, which he did not do in Mr. Roof's case. In 2015, the FBI created 3,648 fetchreferrals .
In addition, Mr. Biden falsely claimed that gun manufacturing is "the only industry in America, a billion dollar industry, that cannot be continued. "
Congress passed a law in 2005 prohibiting the prosecution of firearm manufacturers" for harm only caused by the criminal use or illegal production of firearms or ammunition products by third parties when the product performed as intended and intended. "But they can still be the target subject to other types of lawsuits - for example, for breach of warranty or if a manufacturer or dealer sells a gun knowing it would be used in a crime.
The firearms industry is not alone in benefiting from special protections against prosecution, either. For example, tech companies also benefit from a legal shield called Section 230 , which protects websites from any liability for content created by their users.
