Politifact Finds Joe Biden Exaggerates about Background Checks at Gun Shows
District of Columbia | April 9, 2021
- If you go to a gun show and buy a firearm from a federally licensed seller, you will have to pass a background check, just as if you went to a bricks-and-mortar gun store. You would only escape a background check at a gun show if you bought from a seller who isn’t federally licensed.
- While the data is incomplete, federally licensed sellers have been found to make up a substantial share, and perhaps a majority, of gun show vendors.
In a Rose Garden event, President Joe Biden announced several actions his administration will take to address what he called an “epidemic” of gun violence. Biden repeated his call for Congress to pass legislation to expand background checks. The House voted largely along party lines to pass a pair of background check bills this year, but they haven’t moved forward in the Senate. “These bills, one, require background checks for anyone purchasing a gun at a gun show or an online sale,” Biden said at the April 8 event. “Most people don’t know it, you walk into a store and you buy a gun, you have a background check. But you go to a gun show, you can buy whatever you want, and no background check.”…
Advocates for stricter gun control measures often talk about the “gun show loophole,” though some observers say the term is a misnomer. The phrase itself doesn’t explain who is and isn’t required to run background checks at gun shows. Federal law requires that people in the business of dealing in firearms be licensed by the federal government. Specifically, the law says that a license is required if “a person who devotes time, attention, and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms.” The law specifically rules out a required license if a person “makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.” This can sometimes be a fuzzy distinction, but it means many sellers of guns do need to have a license…..
Our ruling
Biden said, “You go to a gun show, you can buy whatever you want, and no background check.” This is overstated. If you go to a gun show and buy a firearm from a federally licensed seller, you will have to pass a background check, just as if you went to a bricks-and-mortar gun store. You would only escape a background check at a gun show if you bought from a seller who isn’t federally licensed. While the data is incomplete, federally licensed sellers have been found to make up a substantial share, and perhaps a majority, of gun show vendors. We rate Biden’s statement Mostly False.
(Excerpts from Politifact)