No Deal

The Drop in Federally Licensed Firearms Dealers in America

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has made reversing the decrease in the number of FFLs a high-priority issue. In the February 2001 issue of its publication America's 1st Freedom, an article entitled "Gun Dealers Dwindle Under Clinton-Gore" bemoaned the drop in FFLs:

The number of federally licensed gun dealers dropped from 245,628 to 69,951 in the six years after the failed Brady law and the 1994 Crime Bill were put on the books. While Clinton and Gore have long professed that their efforts have not affected hunters, it's hard to imagine that none of the 176,000 gun dealers run out of business by the administration catered to hunters or other sportsmen.¹⁰

NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre also addressed the issue in his column that month, proclaiming, "BATF's blatant anti-dealer policies�which have harassed thousands out of business�must be reversed."¹¹ The NRA clearly wants to increase the number of gun sellers, and has attempted to realize that goal by creating a new class of licensees to operate at gun shows.

In 1999 Senator and NRA Board Member Larry Craig (R-ID) offered an NRA-drafted alternative to an amendment by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) dealing with background checks at gun shows.^c The Craig amendment would have created a new classification of licensees called "special registrants." The Craig proposal would have allowed "special registrants" access to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)^d in order to perform background checks at gun shows. Creation of a new bureaucracy composed of this new class of licensees could have dangerous repercussions.

c) The Lautenberg amendment was a proposal to close the "gun show loophole" by requiring that gun purchasers at gun shows undergo the same Brady background check whether they were buying from a licensed dealer or an unlicensed individual. The amendment was agreed to by a 51 to 50 vote in the Senate and was attached to Senator Orin Hatch's (R-UT) Juvenile Justice bill (S. 254) which passed the Senate 73 to 25. The gun show provision was not included in the version of the Juvenile Justice bill that passed in the House of Representatives, and the bill eventually died in a conference committee.

d) NICS is the system which implements the background check required in the Brady Law. A set of criminal record databases are checked for the name of the potential gun purchaser. The purchase is then either allowed to proceed, is denied, or may be delayed for up to three business days if the check turns up ambiguous information that requires further scrutiny.

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 All contents � 2002 Violence Policy Center