Dem-ordered study to expose illegal online gun sales backfires

Dana Mathewson

The Left keeps insisting, absent any proof, that it's the easiest thing in the world for someone without proper documentation to fire up his computer browser and go onto the Internet, find any old gun dealer and buy himself a shootin' iron even though he doesn't meet the legal requirements to own one. Michael Bloomberg, in particular, has made a national reputation for himself as one who insists such things happen practically every day.

However,

[a] Democrat-backed study meant to expose illicit online gun sales instead seemed to show the opposite -- with hardly any sellers taking the bait when undercover investigators tried to set up dozens of illegal firearm transactions.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., as well as Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, had commissioned the Government Accountability Office report to look into how online private dealers might be selling guns to people not allowed to have them.

Their efforts were based on a 2016 report from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which claimed that "anonymity of the internet makes it an ideal means for prohibited individuals to obtain illegal firearms.”

"Congressional requesters asked that GAO access the extent to which ATF is enforcing existing laws and investigate whether online private sellers sell firearms to people who are not allowed or eligible to possess a firearm,” the GAO report said.

[...]

"Private sellers on Surface Web gun forums and in classified ads were unwilling to sell a firearm to our agents that self-identified as being prohibited from possessing a firearm,” the GAO reported, noting that in their "72 attempts ... 56 sellers refused to complete a transaction once we revealed that either the shipping address was across state lines or that we were prohibited by law from owning firearms.” In the other cases, the investigators' website was frozen or they encountered suspected scammers.

Did you catch that? Seventy-two attempts. I would dearly love to see the people represented by those seventy-two attempts arrested and prosecuted the same way you or I would be prosecuted if we had done the same thing. Or the way an actual criminal who had tried to obtain a gun this way would have been prosecuted if they had gotten him.

Ain't gonna happen, though.

The entire article is here, and well-worth the read: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/01/08/dem-ordered-study-to-expose-illegal-online-gun-sales-backfires.html

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