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