So you read the headline of this Strib article, and you think perhaps straw-purchased guns are turning up more often, or maybe that some people out there with clean criminal records are going out to Fleet Farm, picking a gun from the display case, conducting a completely legal and above board purchase, and then embarking on the life of crime.
But then you read the lead, and it’s…
…about stolen guns being used in crime.
That were purchased legally, at one point or another.
I’m not sure if they’ve thought this through.
Unless some enterprising gang conducts a heist from the loading dock add Glock USA, literally every firearm available in the United States was legally purchased at one point or another.
“Even the Mauser KAR 98K grandpa brought back from World War II?“
Well, yeah, the German government purchased it from Mauser in the 1930s or 1940s, and give it to some soldier, from whom your grandfather got it by means fair or foul.
I don’t mean to make light of what is, honestly, a fairly scabrous campaign on the part of big left, the anti-gun movement and the media; the latest chanting point is “there’s a very fine line between legal guns, and legal gun owners, and criminals“.
Of course, with the owners, there is almost invariably not. The overwhelming majority of people who commit crimes with guns have significant criminal records and aren’t allowed to touch, much less own, a firearm.
With the guns? I mean, as long as you gloss over theft (or the federal felony of straw purchasing), it’s both technically true and complete balderdash.