http://legalinsurrection.com/2014/06...urchase-rules/
Abramski v. United States
Supreme Court Affirms Conviction In Gun “Straw Purchase” Case
Quote:
Scalia acknowledges that certainly one purpose of the Act was to increase the difficulty for ineligible persons to acquire guns, but that purpose was not an absolute. Indeed, he notes numerous circumstances under which both Government itself acknowledges that one person can buy, through an FFL transfer, a firearm with the full intent of promptly delivering that firearm to a third person who was no part of the FFL transaction, including
Guns Intended as Gifts. In the government’s view, an individual who buys a gun “with the intent of making a gift of the firearm to another person” is the gun’s “true purchaser.” The Government’s position makes no exception for situations where the gift is specifically requested by the recipient (as gifts sometimes are). So long as no money changes hands, and no agency relationship is formed, between gifter and gifteee, the Act is concerned only with the man ["buyer"] at the counter.
Guns Intended for Resale. Introducing money into the equation does not automatically change the outcome. The Government admits that the man at the counter is the true purchaser even if he immediately sells the gun to someone else. And it appears the Government’s position would be the same even if the man at the counter purchased the gun with the intent to sell it to a particular third party, so long as the two did not enter into a common-law agency relationship.
Intended as Raffle Prizes. The Government considers he man at the counter the true purchaser even if he is buying the gun “for the purpose of raffling [it] at an event”–in which case he can provide his own information on Form 4473 and “transfer the firearm to the raffle winner without a Form 4473 being completed or a [background] check being conducted” on the winner.
He wonders:
Why is the majority convinced that a statute with so many admitted loopholes does not contain this particular ["straw purchase"] loophole? . . . What the scenarios described above show is that the statute typically is concerned only with the man at the counter, even when that man is in a practical sense a “conduit” who will promptly transfer the gun to someone else.
|