An overwhelming majority of gun show operators in New York State have agreed to new procedures to ensure that criminal and mental health background checks are conducted on buyers.
The agreement was reached after undercover agents from the State Attorney General’s office were able to buy weapons, including three AR-15 rifles, without any screening at half a dozen gun shows around the state.
“Our goal is to have a hundred percent of the gun show operators on board, and then we have a good example for other states to follow,” said Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, who negotiated the agreement with the operators. “Once we demonstrate how easy this is, and how it keeps people safe, it weakens the arguments on the Federal level that guaranteeing background checks are overly burdensome or face meaningful opposition.” The operators, with shows from White Plains to Cheektowaga, have also agreed to a broader system to track firearms at their shows, and to guard against illegal sales in parking lots.
New York’s program comes as Congress debates whether to require universal background checks for gun sales, including private sales at gun shows. State law has required such checks since 2000, but Schneiderman said there was ample evidence they were not always done. The 23 operators who have agreed to the protocols are responsible for more than eighty percent of the gun shows in the state.
The investigators, posing as buyers in 2011, were able to purchase firearms even after they told the sellers that they had orders of protection against them, in which case they would fail background checks. Among the weapons bought were AR-15 rifles, like the one that was used in the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Connecticut in December.
“The truth of the matter is most responsible gun show operators and gun owners in America want people to have background checks,” Schneiderman, a Democrat, said. “The overwhelming majority of the folks I’ve talked to on this are crystal clear that they do not want people who have criminal backgrounds or mental health problems to get guns.”
Schneiderman had brought criminal charges against the sellers caught by the undercover agents; in guilty pleas and a trial, the defendants were convicted of failure to perform a background check. His office also accused the show operators of failing to comply with a state law that requires them to post signs about the background check rule, and to notify exhibitors about it. But, in lieu of pursuing civil action against them, he sought to develop the new set of statewide security procedures.
The regulation of guns has been a major subject of debate in Albany in the wake of the Newtown shootings. In January, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, pushed a package of new gun laws through the Legislature, including an expanded ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, as well as a requirement that background checks be conducted for private sales that do not take place at gun shows.
And some lawmakers would go further. State Assemblywoman Linda B. Rosenthal, a Democrat from Manhattan, has introduced a bill that would prohibit children younger than twelve from attending gun shows. “Children should be learning to read and write, not to shoot a firearm,” she said.
The shows have long been a major area of concern for gun-control advocates. Many states either do not regulate them, or have only modest rules for them; New York is among a small number of states that require background checks for private sales at shows.
Dr. Garen J. Wintemute, the director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California at Davis, described New York’s new measures as a good step.
“It’s clear that undocumented private-party sales are an important way for either prohibited persons or those who are getting guns with criminal intent to get those guns,” Dr. Wintemute said. “The majority of them probably occur elsewhere— many of them these days occur on the Internet— but you do what you can do.”
Under the state procedures, participating gun show operators are to track the firearms that go in and out of their events. Most shows will use a system in which guns brought by private sellers are tagged at the show’s entrance with the name of the owner or seller and the gun’s serial number.
When someone buys a gun from a private seller at the show and passes a background check conducted there by a federally licensed firearms dealer, a second tag will be affixed to the gun to indicate the screening was done. When guns are taken out of the show, they will be checked to ensure that the gun either is leaving with the owner or seller who brought it in, or has the second tag.
The procedures developed by Schneiderman’s office also try to increase security in other ways, with operators limiting the number of entrances and exits to their shows, posting conspicuous signs publicizing the background-check requirement, and notifying local law enforcement officials of the shows, so they can monitor them and patrol the area to deter sellers from working outside.
While this agreement has been reached with 23 gun show operators, Schneiderman said he hoped all show operators in the state would accept it by the end of the year.
The new procedures have already been tested at a number of gun shows, including one in Oneonta this month. That show’s organizer, Sandy Ackerman Klinger, who also hosts major shows at the Empire State Plaza in Albany and the State Fairgrounds near Syracuse, said the only hiccup at the Oneonta event was some crowding at the entrance. Ackerman Klinger said gun show operators did not have a problem with what the Attorney General’s office was asking of them, even if some sellers were skeptical. “They get a little bit nervous, understandably, but the first thing I say is: if you want to have another show and want to keep having shows, we want to keep doing everything right,” she said.
Not all operators believe the agreement will make a significant difference. Donald Fiore, a retired Suffolk County detective, used a similar tagging system at his last two shows, including one last weekend in Hauppauge on Long Island. Fiore said he supported the new procedures, but noted that in almost a decade of hosting gun shows, he had witnessed only a few people fail their background checks. “Bad guys don’t come and buy guns,” he said. He said that sellers at his shows had always required the screenings, and that the problem elected officials needed to address was not with enforcement, but rather with the mental health records that are part of the background check system. “There’s no sense in making a background check if the right people you’re going after aren’t in there,” he said.
A person was arrested at one of Fiore’s shows as part of the Attorney General’s sting operation; Fiore said the sale was conducted across the street from the show.
Jacob J. Rieper, the vice president of legislative and political affairs for the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, suggested the new changes were largely cosmetic.
“The only new procedure in place at the last gun show I went to consisted of a single white piece of paper taped onto each dealer table that said a NICS check was required for sales,” Rieper said, referring to the background check. “That’s it. No doubt countless lives will be saved because of it.”
Rico says that Rieper sounds a bit snarky; maybe he's the Grim Rieper... (Having bought gubs at shows in California without any background checks, Rico's not sure how this'll work, but what the hell? Can't hurt...)
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