Mark Kelly filling out his paperwork for an AR15 (courtesy facebook)

“I just had a background check a few days ago when I went to my local gun store to buy a .45. As I was leaving, I noticed a used AR-15. Bought that too. Even to buy an assault weapon, the background check only takes a matter of minutes. I don’t have possession of it yet but I’ll be turning it over to the Tucson PD when I do. Scary to think of people buying guns like these without a background check at a gun show or the Internet. We really need to close the gun show and private seller loop hole.” Mark Kelley, Co-Founder, Americans for Responsible Solutions [via Facebook]

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76 COMMENTS

  1. Again, I may buy a gun off the internet without a background check, but if it’s out of state, I have to have one BEFORE I can take possession of it. That is the same way it works in the store. You fill out the form, pay for your gun (you’ve bought it at this point), then they run the background check. So, technically, EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE buys guns without first going through the background check.

    ETA: My understanding of the reason for this is so they can say prohibited persons bought a firearm and charge them. But, as this site has shown, they don’t really do it that much.

    • I bought 5 firearms in the past couple of months, at 4 different retail establishments, number 5 was a private instate off the internet sale. None of the 4 businesses made me pay or even touched a cash resister before the background check was complete. Three of the four were national chains. The fourth was a local gun shop.

  2. A AR-15 is no more dangerous than any other firearm, why would the background check be any longer?

    • Yes. And why does how LONG a background check takes factor into it’s accuracy and thoroughness? This is stupid as all get-out. In the age of computers that can analyze data at a breakneck speed, why shouldn’t a background check only take seconds? It’s not like the Pony Express is needed to take the request to the State Police who send it by Carrier Pigeon from there…

    • He must think the computer database has to be extra careful when a weapon of mass destruction is purchased.

    • Would you lay off the poor guy? Don’t you all realize he’s a victim? His perspective and opinion matters more than the rest of us.

      Which I could have lived with, right up until the point he started fucking with my rights.

    • Astronaut= printed procedures and lots of little boxes checked. He was selected FOR this behavior.

  3. Question #1. Are you the actual buyer/transferee of the firearms listed on this form? Yes? No?

    Thanks.

      • Is that how he actually filled out the form?

        If not, then yeah I believe he just admitted a straw purchase.

        • You don’t fill out the form with the name of the giftee. The only requirement is you recievd nothing in exchange for the gift….. If you are buying a gun as a gift you simply answer yes on the form and buy th gun

  4. Buys AR, gets noticed, gets outed, backpedals furiously. Sort of brings to mind the old joke about fat girls and mopeds…

  5. Would there be a possibility of a citizen filing a straw purchase case against him in AZ? criminal or civil? IANAL.

  6. What a waste of money. Did common sense go out the window? So he bought it under false pretenses, at least sell it back or cancel the sale so someone else can obtain the gun for their needs. This guy is more than just a loudmouth who is taking advantage of his wife’s situation.

  7. One word. Liar! Got your hands caught in the cookie jar Mr. Gabby Giffords. Do we know which store this was and if so can we petition them not to give Mr. Gabby his Impulse buy AR 15 so that they are not a puppet in his gun grabbing money making scheme. Can we find out if he bought the guns with his gun control organizations money? If so all those gun grabbers “Americans for responsible solutions” also bought one of them dangerous assault rifles.

  8. He bought an AR and plans to turn it over to the police when he gets possession? He has too much money. “Scary to think of people buying guns like these without a background check at a gun show or the Internet.” When’s the last time he went to a gun show or bought a firearm over the internet without having a background check? Better yet, when was his first time?

    • He has too much money and apparently doesn’t realize that the police have actual crimes to worry about, they’re not just sitting around in the police station waiting for this crusader to turn in his guns.

      • No, Mr. Gabby isn’t trying to ban assault weapons one at a time by using his own cash. He simply got caught buying something he desired, however hypocritically, and now he’s backing away from it faster than a cat covering up s***.

      • Although I’m sure that his budget strapped local constabulary will appreciate the free patrol rifle to issue to a deputy…..

    • What exactly do police do when someone just decides, not as a part of any amnesty or buyback program, that they’re just squicked out that they actually own the gun they just bought and want to hand it in? Are they obliged to destroy it? Can they keep it for departmental use? Can they raffle it off for charity?

      • They are supposed to sell them to a FFL but the Tucson PD likes to skirt the law and destroy them.

        • without a background check at a gun show or the Internet

          Internet purchases have to be shipped to an FFL holder who will not release it without a NICS background check. So what do internet purchases have to do with anything? BTW I bought a Mossberg 500 and a WASR 10/63 at a Pennsylvania Gun Show and had to do a background check for each.

  9. Well, if people want to buy up all the ARs, AKs, AUGs et cetera and give ’em to the State, the State’ll have a lot of toys, the “responsible” people will be poor and manufacturers’ll clean up.

    It’s a whole new market… people buying firearms for the PD just as fast as they can be made. >;{>

  10. So let’s see, he bought the AR, got a NICS check, which he passed because he’s not a criminal or a terrorist, and that’s evidence the system is broken? Come again?

    I guess he’d call it good when anyone who buys a gun is subjected to as much hassle and delay as possible. I’m sorry about his wife, but he’s still a jerkoff.

    • He did leave the country and return, without a passport. Isn’t that criminal? I’m not sure who should stamp your passport in space, but he sure didn’t do it.

      • Nice try, but I’m pretty sure space is international territory, by treaty, just like the seas outside the 12 mile limit. Otherwise you’d have to have your passport stamped every time you went deep sea fishing.

  11. I am sure the ATF will be investigating. Is it illegal to make a straw purchase isn’t it?
    He committed the same crime he claims to want to stop in addition to getting these guns of the street?

    He needs to man up and just come out and say, that it is not the machine, but the man who makes the decisions to commit a crime. So as a law abiding citizen, I can buy these guns. Everything I had said until know is just crap..

    Something tells me he got hooked on the AR’s and others while “researching” the “assault weapons” issue. I bet he is on AR15.com and other forums. Check the newbie intro’s see who is new from Arizona in your forums.

    • Yea, like they investigated the news asshat that flashed an (in DC) illegal 30 round magazine on TV.

  12. I call shenanigans…. why would you buy the AR-15 and then just turn it over to the police? Don’t the police already have all the Ar-15’s they need?

    AND!

    There is no Private Seller Loophole! The Government can not, and should not ever be able to, regulate commerce between two individuals.

  14. I’m saving up for a gun buyback program, I’m going to sit outside their buyback area and offer $100 for each firearm ( my county is planning to only give $50 in gift cards for each weapon ) so if “tons of people” sell their guns like the liberals are predicting I may have 10 new guns when or if my country ever decides to have a gun buyback.

    • Who in their right mind would accept $50 for a firearm? My cheapest firearm is worth $60 and my most expensive is worth a HECK of a lot more than that…no way I’d part for $50. Good for you! Great way to build a collection!

    • Use caution. Some of those guns are going to be of the stolen variety. Which gives me an idea….
      Shouldn’t folks who have had their guns stolen be given a chance to recover them by checking through the “bought-back” guns? Or even better, shouldn’t the agencies conducting these buy-back programs be required to check the serial number before destroying them? Any stolen guns could then be returned to their rightful owner. If they’re not going to do it voluntarily perhaps some sort of legal injunction is in order.

    • He acts like they are the only victims…at least his wife LIVED…plenty others did not…so he should quit his crying. I had sympathy for him and his wife at first and cheered her recovery…but now they’ve become professional victims…ugh!

  16. So let me get this straight…he had a problem being able to go in and quickly fill out the 4473 and pass a background check…so he wants people to have to pass a background check to get the rifle like he did? If the background checks are too quick and easy, why does he want everyone to have to go through one? The idea of background checks are not what is off putting to gun owners…it’s the idea that a record will be kept by the government of what we privately own when it’s none of their business.

  17. …and Barry Bonds just used the juice to show how much of an advantage it was to all of the other players. Riiiight.

  18. How is this different from buying drugs from a drug dealer just to give to the police. I know that an ar-15 is not illegal to own ( despite the gun grabbers wanting it to be) but isn’t basically the same. Both are crimes

  19. The guy is married to a Senator and is a friggin ASTRONAUT!!!!

    Of course he sailed through the background check. Seriously? They are gonna bust this guys balls?

    • “They are gonna bust this guys balls?”

      I would have. If I recognized him and it was my store, Id ask him to take his business elsewhere. Then as he is leaving ask how it feels to be told you cant have something.

  20. He may be an assto naught but a rocket scientist he ain’t. I keep seeing people saying that an astronaut should be smarter. Nobody ever said they are that smart. Some bad apples in ever bunch. Kelly and Lisa Nowak come from the same bunch. If you don’t remember Nowak she was the rocket scientist who drove cross county diapers to try kill her lovers wife.

  22. This is like someone in LA who decides to stop smoking thinking he’s helping minimize the smog. *golf clap*

  23. He bought the AR to give to the police? Of all the police I have ever known or even briefly talked with I think they would give all of zero fucks. Some officer might feel real lucky that he’s getting a free AR. They might tell him they won’t take it cause it’s not illegal and wasn’t used in a crime. They may just laugh.

    Whatever happens I wish I could be a fly on the wall… with a video camera.

    • I guess he’s the reason why you can’t find one. Apparently, he goes out of his way to buy all the evil rifles still in stock and promptly turns them over to the police, purely out of his good will and concern for our safety! What a nice guy. And by nice I mean asshat.

    • I went to a gun show here in the outskirts of Tuscan last week and even on Sunday there was a decent amount of AR15s and AR10s for sale. If I didn’t already have one, I might have picked one up. Some local shops are starting to restock (slowly) although prices are still a bit high.

  26. Looks like Mr. Kelley may have damaged his noggin after too many take-offs / re-entries into our Earth’s atmosphere. Anybody else want to ask NASA to officially check out his damaged noggin, in the name of science?

  27. I would like to find out if Mr. Kelly actually picked up his firearms yet or not. If not, then upon his return I sincerely hope the gun shop in question forks over his money instead of the guns, tells him to leave and never come back again. That IS their right, you know.

    Tom

    • Well Tom, why don’t you put up the fiat to allow the gun store to return his money. The gun store is in business to make money, not an instrument to live out your moral fantasies.

  28. Please tell me this is a joke because nobody can be this redundant.
    “Let me buy a pistol then by this ar15 so I can give it to police so nobody can ever buy it.” That’s liberal logic but he’s buying a pistol, so is he a liberal, or an unaligned idiot? That’s the same as saying “Hey im gonna cut this tree down so nobody can cut it down.”

    • Nah, more like “I’m going to cut down this tree so nobody can cut it down, AND cut down the whole forest so they can’t deforest the area.”

    • Pretty much has always been the case. See also John Glenn x2.

      Sit down, push button, hang on. NASCAR drivers at least have to push with right foot and turn left. Locomotive engineers even have go/stop levers.

      Astronut likely to complicated for Algore though.

      • “Astronut likely to complicated for Algore though.”

        No way!!! Al Gore invented the internet and global warming and Manbearpig.

  32. Ughhhhh the gleeful busybody mentality drives me up the WALL.
    I’m sorry the other kids had more fun than you while you were following the rules. I’m sorry you’ve never been lauded for how obedient you are and it’s given you a chip the size of Gibraltar on your shoulder. But leave well enough alone, man. It is neither your job nor your right to police the purchases of others, or to level legal action against things that frighten you.

    Also how the hell is there a gun buyback in Arizona? Is there a tractor buy back in Nebraska, too? A sad asshole buyback in New Jersey?

  33. I know, it’s absolutely terrifying how easy it is for thousands upon thousands of people to buy ARs. I mean, just look at how many deaths are caused by ARs every day per the countless numbers out there.

    Oh, wait…

    Reprehensible moron. Screw him and all like him.

  34. where are the heads at?!
    500,000-800,000 children go ‘missing’ each year and we focus on gun control?!
    if my child went ‘missing’ i’d surely have ‘gun control’ in hand!
    congressmen & women, senators, those who should rise above all doubt…we need to change priorities and right now.
    ‘a half a million ‘missing’ children are really, really higher priority than any other ‘political’ agenda…No?!
    dr brown

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