How difficult is it to buy a handgun online without a firearms license?
I think the real answer is “why would you buy it online, when it is so easy to buy locally?” I don’t know what state you are in, but generally private transactions, conducted face to face, are completely legal and unregulated. There are no paperwork requirements, no background checks, nothing. In some places gun shows fall into that same category. Unless you have “I am a felon” tattooed on your forehead, you simply have no need to go to the lengths of meeting an illegal arms dealer in a sketchy bar and so on — you can just do this legally and locally. (Well, I say “legally,” but maybe “outside the purview of the state” would be more accurate — there is simply no assessment of the transaction’s legality at any point.) A couple of big cities (mostly New York, DC, and Chicago) have much stricter gun laws, but if you live in those places, driving a few hours will solve your problem (albeit not legally). The question of whether any shipping companies routinely xray looking for guns is int
I believe the poster’s actual question is how difficult handguns are to obtain illegally online. I don’t know how hard it would be to get a gun illegally online, but it seems like it would be fairly risky, since sellers would need to display somewhere that they have a gun for sale. More importantly though, it would probably be far simpler to get a gun illegally locally, especially somewhere like Arizona, since, for example, I can buy a gun right now and gift it to you, and there is no burden on me to check if you can legally own it.* This is a straw purchase, which is illegal, but it’d be easy to do. I can also buy a gun and then later decide to sell it to you, again with no need to verify that you can legally own it, and also without any documentation of the sale. *I will not do this. You shouldn’t either.
I’ve worked for UPS, and I can tell you firsthand that many things, of anything you imagine, gets shipped and UPS is none the wiser. There are basic security protocols in place, but most of those are to keep the “A1” workers there from taking stuff, not to keep them safe. My wife, who works there currently, was just telling me about a situation they had the other day where a driver found (what was later identified as) human blood dripping out of a box. The box ended up containing a human organ. This is one of the oddest stories I’ve heard, but not the most odd. So, I’m imagining that people probably get guns shipped via this manner all the time – all the perks of the mail, none of those (as far as I know) pesky felony laws for shipping stuff they don’t want to ship, if you get caught.
If you are in a place with relative loopholes around gun shows, it could be very easy to buy a gun illegally. If not, it would probably be around the same difficulty as a similarly non-connected person seeking to buy illegal drugs: in other words, it depends, not easy, and with definite legal dangers, but quite possible for any motivated person. I don’t know whether it is relevant to you or not, but the report I read states that VT killer Cho’s gun purchases were done legally.
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- How difficult is it to buy a handgun online without a firearms license?
