A Craigslist for guns, with no background checks
Digital loophole alarms advocates of gun control
Another school week had just begun at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School in St. Louis when Orlando Harris, armed with a recently purchased AR-15-style rifle and 600 rounds of ammunition, burst into the building with a declaration: “You are all going to die!”
Harris, a 19-year-old graduate of the school, opened fire that morning in October, killing Alexzandria Bell, 15, and Jean Kuczka, a 61-year-old physical education teacher. More than half a dozen others were injured before the police fatally shot the gunman in a room where he had barricaded himself.
Harris had struggled with mental health issues and his family had him committed more than once, triggering a rejection on the federal background check system when he tried to buy a gun at a licensed dealer 16 days before the shooting. But Missouri is one of 29 states that have no background check requirement for private sales. Harris found a weapon by browsing online on Armslist.
Federal law requires background checks only for purchases made through the approximately 80,000 businesses that sell, ship, import, or manufacture weapons licensed through the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Unlicensed private sellers, by contrast, can legally sell at gun shows, out of their houses, and, increasingly, through online platforms such as Armslist that match buyers with sellers.
The growing digital loophole is causing alarm among guncontrol advocates, and some whose relatives were targeted with powerful weapons purchased with relative ease online.
But the regulatory landscape might be changing. Senate Democrats, long blocked in their attempts to require universal background checks, negotiated a provision into the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, signed into law last year, that is expected to vastly increase the number of background checks in the unregulated gun market.
The regulations required to put the law into effect — expected to be released soon — would require anyone who earns a profit from selling firearms to obtain a federal license and conduct background checks.
Previously, dealers were required to join the federal system only if they derived their chief livelihood from selling weapons. Failing to register carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and $250,000 in fines.
The new measure is an attempt for the first time to regulate dealers such as Armslist, Florida Gun Trader, and GunBroker.com, an online marketplace responsible for selling tens of thousands of guns in the United States every year.
In March, President Biden included implementation of the provision in an executive order on gun policy. Senior officials from the Justice Department and the ATF have been working closely with the White House to draft the regulations, targeting the second half of 2024.
The regulations could set a threshold number of transactions that would define a dealer; gun-control groups hope to see it at five sales a year or lower.