I went to the Victorville Gun Show today. I walked away the proud owner of an Airsoft MP5. (Basically a BB gun.) It did remind me of the, ahem, Democrats stomping their feet about the "gun show loophole."

Gun control proponents argue that people can go into gunshows and walk out with guns that day. This is true (to some extent) but fails to give the whole picture. State laws are generally stricter than federal laws. For example, in California where I live the state requires that all transfers of guns require a 15 day waiting period. In other states only the primary transfer of a gun (sales from the dealer) has a waiting period and that secondary sales (from a private party) has no waiting periods and no background check. So, yes you can go to a gunshow and buy a gun from a private party, but then again you could do it at a streetcorner as well and still be legal.

But the real question, I think, is "Do waiting periods reduce crime." The 1994 gun control act provided for a Federal five day waiting period. This forced about half the states that didn't have a waiting period to enact one compared to the states which already had ones in effect. One would expect the states that enacted the waiting periods to have a reduction in crime and that the trends could be compared to the states that had waiting periods already in effect.

The August 2000 issue of the Journal of the Medical Association studied the results. There were no decreases in violent crime. (Non-violent crime was studied.) Oh, well.