[Oceander]

As I understand it, (and I’m not a lawyer) one can gift or sell a gun to anyone within one’s state (assuming the state law allows it). What you can’t do is buy a gun for someone else and have them pay you for it. And you can’t lie on the form that states that you are the actual purchaser of the gun. This guy went into the gun store with the idea of buying the gun for someone else with their money. That has always been considered a “straw purchase”—the fact that the person he was buying for was legally able to buy the same gun (in his own state) is not an exception to the straw purchase rule.

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.

I think you got it pretty well. There are arguments on both sides of the case, but I think the majority has the better argument here.

[I cannot think of a name]

What is amazing to me is the way this has been allowed to become such a big deal.

I myself would NEVER purchase a gun for another person. I might buy a gun, take it to the range one time, decide I really don’t like it, and sell it to someone since I no longer want it.

But I would never buy a gun for another person. Trust me.

[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.