- http://flickr.com/photos/glasgows/
The Tucson City Council voted unanimously yesterday to advance a plan to require background checks on all gun purchases at gun shows at the Tucson Convention Center and other city-owned property.
“This is good policy for Tucson,” Councilman Paul Cunningham told The Range. “I hope other jurisdictions follow suit.”
Under current law, only federally licensed firearm dealers are required to conduct background checks when guns are purchased. People without licenses who want to sell their guns have no access to the background-check database. (For more on how the system works, check out last week’s feature story, “Background Noise.”)
The city attorney is expected to return within a few weeks with a legal language that would require, as a part of any lease for the TCC or other city property, background checks to be conducted on any gun sales.
The evening council meeting was packed with supporters of background checks, including Pam Simon, a former aide to Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords who was among those shot on Jan. 8, and Patricia Maisch, who wrestled an extended magazine away from the shooter that day and prevented him from reloading his gun.
“This is an absolutely wonderful first step,” Simon said. “Overwhelmingly, Americans believe the gun-show loophole should be closed.”
After the meeting, Roadrunner Gun Show manager Lori McMann said she’d move two or three gun shows she does each year at the TCC to the privately owned Tucson Expo Center. She already does a few shows there each year.
She estimates she pays the city around $20,000 per show. The city will also lose out on parking revenues and other related benefits from having the show at the TCC, such as the use of TPD special-duty officers as security at the show.
She said federal and local law-enforcement will no longer have the ability to keep an eye on the show from an upstairs vantage point at the TCC.
“They can see the entire floor and everything that goes on at that show all weekend,” McMann said.
McMann compared Arizona to California, where she also produces gun shows. California has a system that allows for background checks on all sales at gun shows.
“It runs very smoothly,” said McMann, who said the state regulates gun shows and requires licenses for businesses that produce them. When unlicensed firearm dealers sell guns, buyers have to go through a 10-day waiting period and a background check.
“They spent millions of dollars setting that up and a whole lot of time,” McMann said.
The Arizona Legislature has generally backed laws that prevent jurisdictions from conducting background checks.
McMann doesn’t expect to take legal action against the city to force them to drop the requirement for background checks.
“We can’t afford legal action at this time and I don’t believe the NRA or Gun Owners of America plans on picking up any tab for that at this point,” McMann said.
This article appears in Jan 31 – Feb 6, 2013.
Your article gives Lori McMann a bully pulpit. I was disgusted by her coarse behavior last night. She is, to put it civilly, not a reliable informant. This woman makes bank proliferating guns in our society. To make it worse, she provides a venue where criminals who are prohibited from owning them can shop for guns at their leisure, knowing they will not have a background check. She is a purveyor of death and mayhem, in my humble opinion and I hope she never sets foot in our city again. Hers is blood money. Let’s be rid of it.
Hey Jim, grow up. You want corruption, look no further than the city council. You are just as uneducated as they come. Now lets discuss coarse behavior, the city council attempted to stack the deck in their favor by not allowing the citizens that actually support the Constutition. There is no equal reprersentation on the city council with every member belonging to the same uberliberal party that is willing to stifle the rights of the citizen for another corrupt vote.
The media and the anti-gun lobby keeps bandying about the term “all gun purchases”, do they even understand or know what the current laws say about what is considered a “gun” or “firearm” under the present laws, I doubt that they do, so I hope that those that would want to pass all of these laws and regulations understand what they are voting on and not let their emotions or lack of education on gun laws cause them to vote in a law that is rediculous on its face and will cause legal problems for the city.
Watch as the state strikes it down in a few months. I never went to the shows at the TCC so no big whoop. I hate being harassed by the homeless there. I will continue to go to the other shows elsewhere though which will continue.
The City of Tucson doesn’t need the money anyway, as their financial house is in good order (not).
I haven’t been to the TCC show for years anyway, as I prefer other venues.
As for Jim’s very clueless comment above, out of the literally 1,000’s of people at the Crossroads of the West show last month at the fairgrounds, I saw maybe a dozen or so private sellers, and they weren’t moving much product, as everything they were offering was way overpriced.
Do not forget the DHS director. Be sure to take your scissors!!
Nintz, you may not be making the gun-control advocates on this site happy, but you hit the nail on the head. The Tucson City council can mandate background checks all they want: the only result will be less business for the TCC. To close the loophole on all gun shows here, you need action from – at minimum – the State level, though Federal action would be a more likely avenue for gun control advocates to achieve their goals on this issue. All the City Council did was increase the TCC’s financial problems while lining up their reelection bids. It was politics. Not good policy.
More liberal bull-shit from the left , tack on tucson weekly bias writers
What is wrong with a background check. I do not see a problem here.
Gun ownership should be treated like car ownership. To own and drive car, you need physical and mental competence, training, a license, liability insurance, and a certain level of income to maintain, properly store, and insure the car. Every car and every sale is tracked. Why don’t we have the same requirements for guns, weapons, firearms, etc?
Why are background checks for every sale and universal registration so scary? The government already knows who owns a dog, who owns a car, who owns a house, who is married, where you live, where you work, how much you make, and if you are on social media, they know where you went for dinner and who you were with. Why don’t we know who owns a gun?
@ Hadley.
Because the government licensing and registration requirements on your car are primarily a way to extract money out of you.
Please tell me that this whole gun registration issue is about money, so I can laugh at your naivete.
So why not push the feds to allow private citizens the right to do background checks. The law (fed) says that’s illegal in claiming to close a loophole what you demand is to violate federal law. Get a clue if you can’t buy one I’ll loan you mine. Lets claim to fix a nonexistent problem by demanding people do the impossible but ignore the fact that it is an impairment to owning a weapon and clearly a violation of the state constitution and state law. Easy solution do business elsewhere, great policy chase away customers and businesses.
There was a common thread among the authors of the 2nd Amendment and the United States Constitution. That was known as reason. Unfortunately, they were not able to anticipate the magnitude of its absence more than two centuries later.
Alan’s comment has validity. The is very little reason or common sense on either side of the aisle, and not just with the latest flavor of the month (gun control), but with almost every issue brought up.
When a car changes hands, much more is required than when a gun changes hands. Why is this?
The 2nd amendment was passed when colonists needed guns to fight the British. It is completely out of context now. I am for limiting people’s right to kill others.
The statistics on gun fatalities in this country are shocking when compared with other countries such as Canada, European nations.
Linda Abrams
This is just another example of the never ending stupidity by the Tucson City Council … I will never let a background check be done on me for buy anything! If I want a howitzer in my front yard, the US Constitution says that I can have one! All you idiots out there that don’t understand the 2nd Amendment should go back to school and learn about it. The right to possess and have guns has nothing to do with hunting, it has everything to do with protecting yourself against our own government if necessary! So, let the stupidity stop! If anyone wants a gun, weapon, artillery, automatic weapons … then buy God … get them and keep them.
Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.
–William F. Buckley, Jr.