The Supreme Court narrowly ruled that buying a gun for someone else – and lying about it on official documentation – is illegal. Adam Winkler shares the story behind the case:
Bruce Abramski must have known he was going to get into trouble when he bought a Glock 19 for his uncle. A retired police officer, Abramski was familiar with gun regulation. Yet he accepted $400 from his uncle, went to a local gun store, and – as required to purchase the Glock – filled out federal Form 4473. Question 11.a of that form required Abramski to confirm that he was “the actual transferee/buyer of the firearm(s)?” Question 11.a includes, in stark bold lettering “You are not the actual buyer if you are acquiring the firearm(s) on behalf of another person. If you are not the actual buyer, the dealer cannot transfer the firearm(s) to you.” Nonetheless, Abramski signed the form, knowingly lying about his intentions in purchasing the gun for his uncle.
When he was finally caught, Abramski answered with the audacity increasingly typical among a certain class of gun owners: He insisted the law itself was illegal. His lying, he claimed, was perfectly lawful. Surprisingly, he almost convinced the Supreme Court to let him off. Instead, a narrow majority of the Court declined Abramski’s invitation to gut one of the nation’s most important laws designed to reduce easy access to guns by felons and the mentally ill. The ruling is a relief to law enforcement – and a setback for the National Rifle Association.
Tim Murphy elaborates:
In the case, Abramski v. United States, the NRA and other gun groups argued that lying about who would end up with the gun shouldn’t matter if the intended owner could legally own one – and more broadly, that the entire prohibition on straw purchasing was itself a “legal fiction” with no real basis in the law itself. Twenty-six states signed on in support, arguing that the law infringed on their rights to regulate gun sales.
In the majority opinion, Justice Elena Kagan, who was joined by the three other liberal-leaning justices and the swing vote, Anthony Kennedy, emphatically disagreed: ‘No piece of information is more important under federal firearms law than the identity of a gun’s purchaser—the person who acquires a gun as a result of a transaction with a licensed dealer.”
Jeff Shesol examines the rulings:
In his dissent, Scalia—joined by Roberts, Alito, and Thomas—heaps contempt on the majority’s view that the “true buyer” of the handgun in question was not Bruce Abramski, who went to the counter, (falsely) filled out the forms representing himself as the purchaser, and bought the gun, but Abramski’s uncle, who had given him the money and, as arranged, took possession of the gun just after the sale. This, to Scalia, is sophistry. “Abramski’s uncle,” he writes, “was not the ‘person’ to whom the gun was ‘s[old].'” The “plain language of the Act” makes that obvious; so does “ordinary English usage.” Scalia offers a homespun example: “If I give my son $10 and tell him to pick up milk and eggs at the store, no English speaker would say that the store ‘sells’ the milk and eggs to me.”
But Justice Elena Kagan is an English speaker, and here is what she replies in a footnote to her majority opinion in Abramski: “The dissent claims the answer is easy. … But try a question more similar to the one the gun law’s text raises: If I send my brother to the Apple Store with money and instructions to purchase an iPhone, and then take immediate and sole possession of that device, am I the ‘person’ … who has bought the phone or is he? Nothing in ordinary English usage compels us an answer either way.” Scalia, in a retort to Kagan’s reply (this could go on all day!), professes to find it “puzzling” that the majority thought “the answer would be different if the sale involved consumer electronics instead of groceries.”
Paul M. Barrett marvels at the close decision:
What’s amazing about this decision is that four dissenting members of the court – led by Justice Antonin Scalia – were prepared to rule against the federal government in a fashion that would have undermined countless prosecutions of alleged gun traffickers. To put this more starkly: The Supreme Court is one vote away from judicially nullifying one of the most common tools U.S. law enforcers use to deter and punish criminals who send other people into gun stores to purchase firearms and circumvent the federal background-check system.
Nicole Flatow considers the stakes:
One goal of federal gun law is to “keep guns out of the hands of criminals and others who should not have them.” Abramski argued that so long as [his uncle, Angel] Alvarez is a legal purchaser, that goal is not threatened by their transfer. But the dynamic between third-party purchasers and the ultimate user of a gun is more complex than the picture painted here. In gun trafficking schemes, there may be two, three, or more go-betweens who hold the gun before it gets to the ultimate end user, who may be banned from purchasing a gun. Alvarez, for example, could have later sold the gun to another person, who sold it to another. Punishing the person who lies about their purchase in the first place prevents gun traffickers from skirting the law by arguing the legality of the immediate third party.
There is also a second goal of federal gun law, which is to “assist law enforcement authorities in investigating serious crimes.” This pursuit is severely thwarted by Abramski’s purchase of a gun. If Alvarez were to later commit a crime using the gun purchased by Abramski, that gun might be traced to Abramski – the first purchaser on the background check form – rather than Alvarez, shielding Alvarez from the gun used in the crime. Making it a crime to lie about the actual buyer allows prosecutors to enforce the federal law’s fundamental purpose of identifying and vetting gun purchasers, in a climate in which straw purchases are a key component of illicit gun trafficking.
The Dish 