• chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Yes, but straw purchase laws are almost impossible to enforce. Buying with the intent to sell to a prohibited buyer is illegal, but good luck proving it.

    Requiring all transfers to go through a background check makes it much more difficult. And it doesn’t even have to involve an FFL - just either open NICS up to the public. Allow someone wanting to buy a gun to generate a code that’s good for X days that they can give to a seller that can be verified along with their name in place of a background check.

    It protects privacy by not allowing checks on random people, but does allow for background checks for private sales.

    I used to work in gun sales, and the reality is that I was probably involved in a few straws. I actively tried to stop them, and even caught a few people trying it, but if someone just came in, passed a background check, and bought a gun I wouldn’t have known any better. It was the people with the sketchy friend nodding and shaking their heads as I went from product to product or people exchanging cash on camera in front of the store that we caught. People who weren’t idiots about it had no trouble.