Bloomberg Investigation: Thousands Of Arms Being Sold Illegally On Website
Unlicensed firearms dealers could be selling thousands of guns illegally, according to an investigation commissioned by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Bloomberg, one of the nation’s leading gun-control advocates and a co-founder of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, asked his investigators to spend eight weeks monitoring the ads on Armslist.com. The classified marketplace, known as a “Craigslist for guns,” is one of the nation’s largest firearms websites.
The inquiry found that nearly one-third of gun ads on the site were posted by high-volume sellers who do not possess the mandatory federal firearms license. At that pace, nearly 244,000 guns would be sold illegally a year due to the “private sale loophole,” which does not require a background check, Bloomberg said Thursday.
“Unlicensed sellers of firearms are flooding the Internet with weapons,” Bloomberg said at City Hall news conference. “The result is a massive online, largely unregulated, secondhand firearms market that threatens the safety of all of us.”
A representative from ArmsList.com did not immediately return a request for comment.
