Whipped Cream Difficulties

Austin’s Saxet show is this weekend. I plan to be there Saturday. Feel free to say “Hi” if you see me: I’ll be wearing my snazzy Gunwalker t-shirt.

In Houston, a company called High Caliber Gun & Knife Shows runs gun shows in the George R. Brown Convention Center. They’re also having a show this weekend. (You may remember High Caliber from High Caliber v. Houston, aka “the city of Houston got their ass whipped and had to pay High Caliber’s legal fees”.)

Gun shows have security, like pretty much any public gathering; rock concert, biker rally, gun show. Gun shows do not generally hire the Hells Angels to provide security; in Austin, Saxet uses APD officers (who I believe are off-duty, but in uniform). In Houston, High Caliber uses off-duty Houston police officers.

At least they did until this past week.

[Mary] Bean [co-owner of High Caliber – DB] said that off-duty Houston police officers who have provided security for her shows for many years were barred this week from performing their normal duties, such as tying patrons’ guns so they can’t be dry-fired, ensuring guns are unloaded, and walking the aisles, providing a presence at the show.

Why?

Houston Police Officers Union president Ray Hunt said the officers were prevented from carrying out these duties because they violate department policies regarding off-duty jobs. The gun show’s rules are that people can’t bring a concealed handgun into the show, but state law allows patrons to do so. That makes the show’s decision a house rule, he said, and HPD policy prohibits its officers from enforcing house rules.

This whole “state law” versus “house rule” thing doesn’t pass the smell test with me. Texas state concealed carry law allows a business to ban the carrying of concealed handguns, if they post a sign to that effect at the entrance or entrances. The sign has to meet specific wording and legibility requirements; we in Texas colloquially refer to them as “30.06 signs” after the relevant section of Texas law.

I haven’t been to a High Caliber show in Houston, but the Saxet shows in Austin have 30.06 signs posted at the entrances; I assume High Caliber does as well, which to me puts things firmly into the “state law” versus “house rule” category.

“It’s not that they were suspended for any reason for danger to the public or danger to the officers. It was simply that they were being asked to enforce a rule that is not a law, and we can’t do that,” Hunt said. “When it’s brought to our attention that house rules are being enforced, we make sure that that policy is changed. If the officer can’t enforce house rules, why would the vendor want to pay them?”

I wonder if off-duty police officers enforce “rules” that are not “laws” in other venues? For example, do off-duty police officers confiscate cameras and recording devices at rock concerts?

According to the HouChron, High Caliber has managed to get security from the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, which doesn’t seem to have a problem with the whole “house rules” thing.

Quoth Union chief Hunt again:

“A police officer may not think they’re enforcing a house rule by checking a gun and tying it, but I can tell you — and I’m on the labor side — that I would not want an officer handling a large number of guns handed to them by citizens who may or may not have had adequate training on that gun,” he said. “I’m betting something was brought to someone’s attention.”

Sounds like “only ones syndrome” again, doesn’t it? Also makes me wonder: I don’t see any indication that any of the officers working security complained. I wonder if somebody – perhaps on the city council or in the mayor’s office – put some pressure on Union chief Hunt. I don’t have any evidence for that yet; this is purely speculative.

Back in December, a man walked into an Austin gun show.

He was with three other guys, was carrying a rifle and a shotgun, and

A police officer working security at the show said in the affidavit that the man carrying the shotgun “acted nervous” and did not know much about the shotgun.

The man sold the shotgun to a dealer for $575. Apparently, after the sale took place, the dealer asked the APD officers running security to run “a serial check that showed that the gun did not belong to Benitez or any of the accompanying men, the affidavit stated“.

So that’s kind of interesting: it doesn’t say explicitly that the gun was stolen and showed up on a hot sheet, but that they were somehow able to check the serial number and determine ownership. Texas does not have any kind of registration or licensing for simple possession of a shotgun or rifle, so I’m not clear on what “a serial check” would have done unless the gun was on the hot sheet.

(I’m also wondering what kind of shotgun this was, if a dealer at the gun show paid $575 for it.)

The gentleman’s stories changed several times: his grandfather owned it, his father owned it, he bought it from someone in the neighborhood for $130.

One of the men that was with Benitez at Saxet said that he found the rifle at a Marble Falls house he was working on and took it, according to the affidavit.

The police confiscated both the rifle and shotgun, and made the gentleman give the dealer back his money.

He is currently charged with “unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon” but not, apparently, theft, and is being held on $20,000 bail.

Sure seems to me like the current system worked. So much for that “gun show loophole”.

Yesterday, I questioned the LAT‘s assertion (without sources) that 40% of all gun sales are private sales that don’t go through the background check system.

Clayton Cramer also questions this, and links to a blog post by John Fund on “National Review Online”:

The dubious statistic of guns that avoided background checks — which is actually 36 percent — comes from a small 251-person survey on gun sales two decades ago, very early in the Clinton administration. Most of the survey covered sales before the Brady Act instituted mandatory federal background checks in early 1994.

Fund also points out that:

• This figure includes transfers between family members and inherited guns, which Obama’s proposal would not touch.
• “…the federal survey simply asked buyers if they thought they were buying from a licensed firearms dealer. While all Federal Firearm Licensees do background checks, only those perceived as being FFLs were counted. Yet, there is much evidence that survey respondents who went to the smallest FFLs, especially the “kitchen table” types, had no idea that the dealer was actually ‘licensed.’ Many buyers seemed to think that only “brick and mortar” stores were licensed dealers, and so the survey underestimating the number of sales covered by the checks.”

Fund quotes John Lott as believing the actual percentage of firearms transferred in private sales is less than 10%.

In addition, Clayton Cramer his own self has a post over at NRO about the “gun show loophole”:

In 2008, three criminologists (one of them not at all friendly to guns) studied the effects on murder and suicide rates in California (which prohibits private sales without a background check) and Texas (which does not). They looked at homicide and suicide rates for adjacent ZIP codes for a week after gun shows. They found no change in suicide rates, and in Texas, which has no restrictions on private party sales, a small but statistically significant reduction in gun homicides.

There’s also a longer Clayton Cramer post, touching on many of the same points, over at PJ Media.

Is it possible that criminals are too stupid to buy guns at gun shows? Or is it possible that they prefer to obtain guns in less expensive ways, such as by theft?

(Hattip on this to Sebastian. As long as we’re talking about private transfers (and since Sebastian stepped up and gave his own example), I’ll talk about my experience. In my entire gun owning life, I’ve had four transfers that didn’t go through an FFL. Three of those were presents (birthday or Christmas) from family members – my brother, father, and stepfather – which, as noted, would not be affected by Obama’s proposal. Transfer number four was a purchase by me of several guns from a private party who inherited them after the death of a parent. I wrote up two copies of an agreement with the serial number, make and model, and price paid for each gun, kept one and gave the sellers the other. I also gave them a photocopy of my driver’s license. In addition, the sellers were people I had known personally for close to 20 years at the time of the purchase. All of my other purchases have gone through an FFL.)