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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Augustus Gloop who wrote (1483268)	9/5/2024 11:21:33 AM
From: pocotrader	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573325

Federal law doesn’t require background checks on private gun sales, but 20 states have expanded background checks. There’s perhaps no policy more central to the gun debate in the United States than background checks. A universal background check requirement is one of the most popular gun reform proposals, with dozens of polls finding that between 80 and 90 percent of Americans support the idea, including a majority of Republicans and gun owners. Despite that support, thousands of guns are sold every year without a check to see if the buyer is prohibited from possessing firearms. Though federal legislation to strengthen requirements hasn’t passed, many individual states have passed their own laws. Below, we break down the gaps in federal law and which states have tried to fill them. Does federal law require gun background checks? In 1993, Congress passed the Brady Act, which mandated that every gun dealer with a Federal Firearms License (FFL) conduct background checks on all potential buyers. The law, however, exempted sales and transfers between private parties. Read Next What Do You Want to Know About Gun Violence in America? Ask The Trace. The private sale exemption was intended to avoid placing a burden on people who only occasionally offload a firearm — like a person selling a gun to a neighbour or transferring one to a family member. But gun reform advocates quickly pointed out that it created an opening for people prohibited from owning firearms to obtain weapons without any form of screening. This led the private sales exemption to be dubbed “the gun show loophole” because many private sellers frequent gun shows and online sites, where they sell firearms without checks. While the practice certainly occurs, the name is misleading: Many sellers at gun shows are licensed and perform background checks, and private sales occur in a variety of venues. Efforts to expand background checks to private sales have repeatedly failed in Congress, but a provision in the federal Bipartisan Safer Communities Act aimed to clarify FFL licensing requirements, which could ultimately result in more background checks. Exactly how effective that will be remains to be seen and depends heavily on enforcement. How often are guns sold without a background check? Because private sales and transfers are exempted from checks and records requirements, it’s unclear how many take place. Our gun sales tracker, for example, relies on background check data and doesn’t include sales that happen without one. Some estimates do exist, though: A 2017 survey found that 13 percent of new gun owners reported that they had purchased their gun without a background check. The same survey found that 45 percent of gun owners who bought a gun online in the previous two years did not undergo a background check. A separate study found that roughly 80 percent of guns acquired for criminal purposes are obtained through unlicensed sellers. With upward of 400 million guns in circulation, the number of guns sold without a background check could be in the millions. Which states have passed their own background check laws? Expanding background check requirements for firearm sales has been one of the gun safety movement’s biggest successes. At least 20 states have enacted laws to expand background checks to cover all or most private sales, going beyond the federal requirements. Some, like Washington, did so through ballot initiatives.