Gun show loophole

"60 Minutes" had a great segment on the gun issue tonight, and a lot of extra info on their site:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/09/60minutes/main4931769.shtml

Even as the stock market has plummeted, shares in Smith & Wesson have nearly quadrupled since November, and sales of guns are going through the roof. [...] Since November, the number of background checks nationally has jumped over 30 percent compared to last year. [...] People are stockpiling bullets. Three hours into [a gun] show, empty stock trays piled several feet high. Fear of Obama has actually created a national ammo shortage. -CBS

Based on 2002 stats, CA had 9.7 gun deaths per 100,000 residents. I wasn't sure if that was low or high, but you can imagine CA would have a lot of violence due to the gang conflicts in urban areas, as well as the drug trade on the border. Well, it turns out that ALL the Southern states have death rates that are higher. This of course correlates with their more lax gun purchasing laws.

They used VA as a case study, since it was home to the Cho-VT mass murder, and it has a bizarre gun show loophole. It is PERFECTLY LEGAL for a private citizen, who is not a registered gun dealer, to sell you or I an assault-style weapon at a gun show without a background check. 30 other states have the same loophole. Supposedly buyers are required to furnish an ID, but since these transactions go unnoticed/unregulated by the gov't, even that cannot be enforced. In an effort to expose and close this loophole, the brother of a VT victim bought an assault weapon at a VA gun show and refused to show his ID when asked. The seller said that was fine if he would throw in another $50 to the sale price. So as you would expect, people from many northern states (with stricter laws) migrate to VA gun shows to buy under these lax laws. Southern guns have been implicated in many crimes up north as well. Even with all the political momentum and public outcry after the VT slayings, the VA legislature failed to pass a law to close that loophole by 2 votes. The pro-gun side argued that Cho did not buy his weapons through this loophole, but the other side fears that the next Cho will.

Supposedly the NRA types are patriots who love America and will defend our freedoms (to bear arms). But why do they support a system where Mexican cartels or Al Qaeda terrorists can infiltrate the US and buy assault weapons no questions asked? Do they count on the diligence/racial profiling of the seller to refuse a brown-skinned buyer? And I guess we can't count on Washington to make much headway, because they are either pre-occupied with the economic crisis, or bought by the NRA. Many of the Dems who won seats from the GOP in the last 2 elections are just as pro-gun, if not more, and accepted contributions by the NRA. 60 House Dems wrote to Obama asking him to reverse his pledge to make the assault weapons ban permanent. But regardless of what Obama wants to do with this issue, it's clear that he won't have Congress' support in the forseeable future.