In a parking lot in Fayetteville, Georgia, John Pander is about to head into a competitive shooting match. And heās brought along a pistol he doesnāt shoot anymore. Itās a SIG SAUER P229.
Pander usually buys his guns new, from federally licensed dealers. He keeps them locked up in a safe at home, but sometimes the safe fills up.
āSo it all comes down to space,ā said Pander. āAnd yeah, sometimes you want to fund the next purchase.ā
So when heās got his eye on a new gun, he puts an old one up for sale.
āIāve used Armslist and Iāve sold quite a few,ā said Pander. āYou just post it up online and people say āIāll take itā or āIāll offer you this much for it.āā
Heās sold about five guns over the last decade this way, with no problems, until recently.
āIt was late in the evening when I finally got the email,ā said Pander. āAnd he says: āWell, Iām trying to buy a gun for my girlfriend, and could we meet at 11 oāclock at this place?āā
The buyer wanted the gun immediately, that same night. It was a red flag for Pander. So was the fact that this is a person trying to buy a gun for someone else.
āThereās two different schools of thought on a person buying something for a wife or spouse or girlfriend,ā said Pander. āSome say that they can do it because itās like a gift to them.ā Others, he said, would argue it might indicate a .
Personally, Pander said he believes people should buy their own guns. He often voluntarily asks buyers to fill out a , though he doesnāt insist on it if the buyer doesnāt want to.
Pander asked the guy if he has a Georgia Weapons License, which would mean heās passed a background check at some point in the past five years. By asking that, he was going above and beyond his legal obligation.
Thatās because when it comes to private sales, federal law says simply that you cannot sell a gun to someone whoās prohibited from having one. You donāt actually have to check.
Turns out, the guy doesnāt have a license. So Pander offers to meet at a federally licensed dealer, who can run a background check for a fee of roughly $25.
The guy doesnāt want to do any of that.
āSo at that point Iām not going to sell him,ā said Pander.
More Questions Than Answers
Researchers think of gun transactions take place without a background check every year. So what do we know about how common careful sellers like Pander are?
The answer, as with many questions involving gun data, is: not a lot.
Duke University economist Philip Cook has how guns make their way from the legal market to the criminal world.
āWhat we know about is quite a bit about where offenders get their guns,ā said Cook. āAnd also we can find out something about the first transaction that that gun was involved in.ā
The two main sources of information researchers have to draw from are from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and anonymous surveys of both gun owners and .
Cook says we know that most people buy their guns new, from licensed dealers who do require background checks. And we know that most people in prison on gun charges say they got their guns privately. But thereās no data about what happens in the middle.
A diagram of gun transactions by legal status. Courtesy of Philip J. Cook, ITT/Terry Sanford Professor Emeritus of Public Policy Studies at Duke University. Featured in .
Philip J. Cook / Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University
Cook has surveyed convicted , who almost all say they got their guns through friends, family or social connections.
āBut it is very rare indeed to say they made that transaction through the internet,ā said Cook.
Way Around A Background Check?
So do we know anything about whether or not most private buyers could pass a background check?
āThe answer, unfortunately, is no,ā said Deb Azreal, who directs research at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center.
āIt is really kind of astonishing that we have no good mechanism to ascertain where guns are,ā said Azreal.
Many gun rights advocates donāt want that kind of system. If it existed, , the government could come take peoplesā guns away.
āBut itās also reasonable to suspect that one reason you go to a private seller and get a gun without a background check is because you think you couldnāt pass that background check,ā said Azreal.
She thinks the number of buyers like that is probably small, but points to a concerning possibility about who is left out of the inmate surveys that researchers rely on: domestic abusers.
āI donāt actually know this, but I suspect [that people with domestic violence misdemeanors] are less likely than someone with a prior felony conviction to be arrested later for a gun crime. That would be my guess,ā said Azreal, careful to repeat that her suspicion is an educated guess.
of in being used to murder intimate partners abound.
āIf you assume, which is reasonable, that the vast majority of people on Armslist are people of good faith, then what you really want to do is work on the sellers of guns, to insist on there being a background check like [John Pander],ā said Azreal āThe problem may be the buyers, but the solution has to lie with the sellers.ā
Azreal said she and her research colleagues had found āstrikingā about the difference between private gun sellers who live in states that regulate private sales and those that donāt.
āWe found that 57% of transfers that took place in states that didnāt regulate private sales had not had a background check, compared to 26% of sales in places that did regulate,ā said Azreal. āIt is indeed true that if you are hell-bent on getting a gun and youāre not a qualified possessor, you can probably figure out how to do it. But the harder you make it, the higher the cost is. And thereās going to be some kind of demand curve.ā
A SIG SAUER P229. The gun John Pander posted for sale online.
Lisa Hagen / WABE
āWould That Guilt Be On My Conscience?ā
21 states and the District of Columbia by requiring background checks or gun permits. Georgia, where John Pander lives, is not one of those states.
He believes people should voluntarily insist on background checks, though heās not comfortable supporting , which would apply to private sales.
āYou can put the laws in place but at what point are you really going to get into infringing on the rights that you have?ā said Pander, expounding on a common point of view among gun rights activists. But he then acknowledges it wouldnāt make much difference in his day-to-day life.
āIf they want to get rid of [private sales without background checks] is it going to hurt me any? I can still go through a dealer and sell the gun. Iāve done that before,ā said Pander. He added he wouldnāt want to lose the ability to quietly sell or give his own family members ā his son, for instance ā a gun.
He also points out that just because someone buys a gun legally doesnāt mean they wonāt use it criminally. But when it comes to his own transactions, he tries to be careful.
āWhat happens if he were to use it in a crime? Would that guilt be on my conscience? If I went and saw, oh thatās the guy I just sold my gun to ā¦ so I donāt want to be any part of that,ā said Pander.
He worries primarily about active shooters, though evidence shows such incidents make up fewer of annual gun deaths. A recent high-profile shooting that killed seven and injured 22 people in Odessa, Texas, is top of mind. the shooter, who was prohibited from possessing a gun, bought the rifle he used in a private sale. Shortly after, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott released an official that private sellers run background checks voluntarily.
The man who tried to buy John Panderās gun circled around weeks later in another email. Pander said the buyer didnāt seem to realize theyād talked previously. The two ran through the same set of exchanges about the girlfriend and the lack of a weapons license, which the buyer claimed he was still working on acquiring. Like the first time, Pander broke off communication.
The buyer isnāt Panderās problem anymore. Itās possible he kept looking for another pistol and someone willing to sell it to him, in a parking lot, late at night.
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