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Buying
Guns
Online
©iSTOCKPHOTO - JSOLIE2
Shopping
online for
your favorite
firearm
doesn’t need
to be a hassle.
[ BY DUNCAN R. MACKIE ]
For the firearms enthusiast, buying guns is always fun!
I
bought my first gun, a Smith &
Wesson Model 37 Chief’s Special
Airweight, when I was a young patrolman
in an East Coast department,
with less than a year on the job. I spent
hours going through gun catalogs and
looking at pistols in dealers’ showcases,
and I finally bought it in a local hardware
store. With interest, the gun cost
me 110 dollars.
Much has changed since then, including
how we can buy guns. Back in
the day, most gun purchases happened
face to face. However, firearms of many
types and varieties could be purchased
through the U. S. mail. The Mannlicher-
Carcano rifle that Lee Harvey Oswald
used to shoot John F. Kennedy was a
mail order gun, a fact used to drum up
support for the Gun Control Act of 1968,
the first major and sweeping regulation
of the sale and possession of firearms
in U. S. history. Mail order sales of firearms
ended with GCA68. After that, all
firearms purchases by individuals had
to be face to face transfers and either
a private purchase (one private citizen
to another private citizen), or from a
Federal Firearms Licensee (or FFL as
they quickly became known). A federal
requirement for Brady/NICS background
checks was added to purchases
from FFLs in 1994, and gun control
activists are still agitating for similar
regulation of private gun sales between
private citizens.
Now, it is possible to buy guns over
the internet and across state lines. That
process still involves Brady/NICS background
checks, and FFLs on both ends
of the transaction, but law-abiding citizens
can shop online at their computers
in the privacy of their homes for the
pistol, rifle or shotgun of their choice.
There are lots of websites that feature
sales of new and used guns. A
Google search for “gun sales websites”
yielded more than 6 million hits: Guns
America.com, GunBroker.com and
AuctionArms.com are probably the biggest
that sell firearms online to private
individuals, and all operate basically
the same way. Some people like auction
sites because they feel they can find
bargains that way, whereas others don’t
want to bother with an auction and
would just as soon buy things outright
in the first place from private citizens or
dealers who place classified ads selling
guns on one of the many web sites dedicated
to that purpose.
Auction sites often lead to higher
prices for sellers, which is why sellers
like them. Auctions also add an emo-
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USCONCEALEDCARRY.COM n CONCEALED CARRY MAGAZINE n MAY/JUNE 2011