What the Supreme Court still doesn't understand about guns

Fox News ^ | June 25, 2014 | John Lott

[BuckeyeTexan]

Exactly.

[jospehm20]

If you look at the form 4473 there is a block (11a) you fill out stating that you are the transferee. It makes exception for gifts which are explained in the instructions. The instructions at the end of the form for block 11 a state that if you were given money for the gun before the purchase you must answer no, you are not the transferee. It also explains the conditions for a gift, which this transfer did not meet. I read in an article somewhere that the uncle wrote the guy a check two days beforehand with “for Glock handgun” written in the memo line. This guy lied on the form and ignored the instructions. I do not know how the feds got alerted to this and I think this is a BS prosecution but this LEO should have known better than to blatantly lie or let his uncle give him a check that said what it did on it.

[Axenolith]

How the hell did this even get to court? The guy must have figured it was OK, and just blabbed about it until some hammer toting DA saw a nail sticking up...

[boomstick]

I don't know a lot about this case, but I thought I read that one of the issues is that Congress did not make straw purchases a crime, and that it was ATF(?) who stretched the law to do so. If that is the case, then the USSC did in fact expand the law in the process of interpreting it. But I could be totally wrong about that.

[marktwain]

“Now, whether or not the straw purchase law is a good idea or not is another matter. But, in my opinion, the Supreme Court did not expand the straw purchase law at all—they just didn’t contract it.”

The problem is the “straw purchase” part. The BATFE added that part of the law. It is not original law, it is regulatory add on. You can argue that the original law is ambiguous, but as Scalia noted, ambiguity is to be decided in favor of the defendant.

[MortMan]

I think the key is that the uncle sent a check for the gun a couple of days before the original purchase. That was the evidence of a “straw” purchase - to get the police discount.

FWIW.

[zeugma]

In my world, a “straw purchase” is when someone who is not legally able to buy a gun has someone else buy it for them and the gun is then transferred/possessed by the one who is prohibited from owning a gun without any background check.

That's the intent of the law that they ignore. It's odd that they would go after someone like this when there are a log bigger fish to fry.

Exactly. There was no intent in this particular case to break the law. The only intent was to save some money on the purchase price of the firewarm. There is no dispute that both parties were legally able to purchase the firearm.  I see a lot ot comments on threads about this case saying "well the law is the law", and my answer to that is that in this case, the law is an ass and so are its supporters.

The supreme court missed an opportunity to support a  common sense application of the law.

[redgolum]

Not correct.

Where I used to live, the local cops would call gun shops with the serial number of the weapon seized or found in order to locate the original purchaser.

Not sure if it ever worked out or not, but I was present for a number of calls in different shops (I knew a few of the cops at the time, and they confirmed it is what they did).