Rumors of a gun sale moratorium within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are greatly overstated. Sales out of the back of shady looking vans on the streets of Philadelphia will be in no way interrupted by the PICS outage. For a little extra money, the intrepid gentlemen who ply this trade will sell you one “without any bodies on it.” Isn’t that nice of them?  Buy two guns, and maybe they’ll throw in the serial number obliteration for free! Rumors are abound that many of these gentlemen will accept crack in lieu of cash. Sales are expected to be brisk.
2 thoughts on “Who Gets Screwed in the PICS Outage?”
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What is the path from manufacturer through buyer for the “shady van” route? Any good studies on this? As a somewhat non-involved observer (don’t have gun, have friends and coworkers that do, am interested in the Constitution, etc.), I think you all would have a lot more luck with the Brady characters if you all got your brains together to figure out how to put the “shady van” out of business…
G
GTT – It all comes back to straw purchases. A person buys a few legal guns from a dealer, then either reports them “stolen” or “loses them.” In reality, they are given out to their thug friends like candy on Halloween. Straw purchases are so bad in Philly that the Attorney General created a Gun Violence Task Force to work alongside the PPD.
I’m a police detective in Philly, and I can leave my Divisional HQ and come back with five guns in two hours. They’re out there, and they’re not too difficult to find. In my Division – we’re number one in shootings this year, and number two in homicides – guns are sold on street corners a la crack and heroin.
The tired argument that crime will go down if we ban gun sales is ludicrous at best, dangerous at worst. It will just keep the law-abiding citizens unarmed, and at the prey of the thugs.