Push for Online Gun Sales Meets a Surprising Opponent: Small Gun Dealers

The pleas came in droves.

For mom-and-pop shops, the Trump administration’s push to loosen firearms restrictions is welcome in nearly all respects but one: allowing guns to be sold entirely online.

Two proposals paving the way for the move have exposed unlikely fault lines, as independently owned brick-and-mortar stores urge the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which sets federal gun regulations, to rethink the plan. They warn that together, the changes — letting guns be shipped directly to buyers and allowing for remote background checks — would compromise their livelihoods by favoring big retailers, and come at the expense of public safety.

“At best, this is a wealth transfer to large corporations,” Colin Overbey, the manager of a small business in Ormond Beach, Fla., that sells guns, wrote during the public comment period for the rule changes. “At worst it is just asking for problems that presently don’t exist.”

In its analysis, the A.T.F. said the regulation would come at no cost to the roughly 45,000 federally licensed gun dealers, most of which are small businesses, the agency noted. Instead, the bureau argued, it would benefit the dealers, “because it would allow all of them to potentially capitalize on a larger statewide market by allowing online sales.”

The firearms bureau did not respond to questions about the backlash. But the agency said it was committed to reviewing the public’s feedback before completing the proposed regulations.

Mr. Overbey is one of hundreds of people lobbying the A.T.F. to halt proposals that could transform the gun industry. The administration has said the changes are part of a broader effort to modernize how the government regulates firearms, easing burdens on gun dealers and owners. More than 13 million gun sales each year could move online if the buyers adjust how they shop, according to an estimate from the agency.

In an interview, Lee Kinnard, who has owned Dominion Firearms in Miami, Ariz., for almost a decade, said he and other small dealers feared that opening the industry to direct online sales would enable a few big companies to swoop in and dominate the market. That includes GrabAGun, a retailer based in Texas for which Donald Trump Jr. serves as a director and holds about 1 percent of shares. The company, whose stock value has more than halved since it went public last year, has banked its business model on the shift, billing itself as “an Amazon of guns.”

But Mr. Overbey, like other small firearms dealers interviewed for this article, expressed worry that letting businesses conduct background checks by video would make it harder to spot red flags. There is a “safety concern of someone either trying to buy for someone else or someone that’s buying for themselves that really shouldn’t have a gun,” Mr. Overbey added.

The window for public feedback to the rules closed at the beginning of the month, leaving the agency to decide whether and how to move forward with the policy.

Under federal law, gun sales can already take place online. But in most of those cases, a customer must pick up the firearm at a physical store, and only after initiating a background check in person. The new proposals would eliminate those requirements, allowing for guns to be shipped directly to the buyer after verifying his or her identity by video. Such a change, critics say, would remove critical safeguards that have required dealers and buyers to complete the transaction in person.

The A.T.F. advises dealers on how to spot straw purchasers, or people buying a firearm on behalf of someone else, and on other signs of a person who should not be in possession of a firearm because they may be under the influence. It is a responsibility that gun dealers say they take seriously, and one that small businesses warn would evaporate should the administration follow through with its proposals.

Mr. Overbey, the business manager of a shop named Dunn’s Attic, mentioned a series of occasions when he turned down purchases after observing shoppers in person: a father accompanying a son too young to legally buy a firearm; a woman buying a gun that her boyfriend appeared to select for himself; and a young adult who seemed uncomfortable and struggled to make eye contact.

“My license premises is within a school zone,” Mr. Overbey said. “I am roughly 200 yards from a day care and about 500 from a school. I don’t play games.”

In a notable departure from its general support of the Trump administration’s push to roll back limits on guns, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry’s trade association, told the A.T.F. that it opposed the proposal based on “public safety implications,” including concerns that online transactions could be “exploited by bad actors.”

Trump Administration: Live Updates

Updated

Lawrence G. Keane, the group’s senior vice president, said in an interview that based on more than 1,000 responses to a survey circulated to members in July, the foundation was “overwhelmingly opposed” to the shift.

“This issue of brick and mortar not liking the internet is not a new thing — it goes back many, many years, and it divides segments of the industry,” Mr. Keane said. “But from N.S.S.F.’s point of view, we thought what was important was to point out public safety potential consequences by not having in-person transactions.”

Some dealers who support the administration’s effort say that it simply brings gun sales into the modern era, echoing a common refrain among gun rights groups, manufacturers and retail companies.

Andrew Zeller, who runs the concierge gun business Precision Turn Key Solutions from his home in Grand Rapids, Mich., favors the rule change. Remote sales, he wrote in commenting on the rule, would open up “far greater opportunities,” because some of his clients cannot or do not want to travel to his home.

“I think it’s just trying to streamline and make the overall process more efficient,” Mr. Zeller said in an interview.

Marianna Mitchem, a former A.T.F. official who led the division that inspects federally licensed gun dealers, warned that sellers were effectively the first line of defense. Under federal law, she added, the agency had no way to question a purchase once it had been completed, short of opening a criminal investigation.

Ms. Mitchem is now an adviser to Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit advocacy group founded by Michael R. Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York. The group scraped more than 3,500 comments in response to the A.T.F.’s proposed regulation, or about 80 percent of the total number, and analyzed them using artificial intelligence.

It found that a majority of the commenters were opposed to the change, and that many of those who identified as members of the firearms industry cited fears of market consolidation.

The New York Times corroborated the analysis by using an A.I. model to determine the level of support for the proposal. The public comments are not a scientific poll and may not reflect the views of Americans broadly.

Among the large corporations that some businesses say could outpace them is GrabAGun, a retailer that is more than a decade old.

While a dealer would have to be registered in the same state as interested buyers to make a remote sale under the proposed regulations, big chains and online retailers are among those with the resources to do so.

On an earnings call in May, shortly after the administration proposed allowing direct online sales, Marc Nemati, the chief executive of GrabAGun, assured investors that the company was “uniquely positioned for this opportunity.” GrabAGun is for now only licensed to sell guns in Texas, but can ship to dealers across the country.

Asked for comment, GrabAGun said that the new background check requirements for online purchases would be sufficiently rigorous.

“This rule would allow GrabAGun to serve customers who need or strongly prefer the alternative of going to a retailer in person,” the company wrote in its public comment.

Across the country, small businesses are bracing for a hit.

Elizabeth Roncali runs Serenity Safe Shot from her home in Ironwood, a remote city on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. She earns most of her revenue from transferring firearms to people shopping online, acting as the intermediary.

In an interview, Ms. Roncali said that if local dealers were eliminated from the equation, she would lose the $25 fee she charges for transfers, a small profit that is also only a small saving for a buyer who might opt to have a gun shipped straight to his or her door.

If her shop closes, her community will lose her as a resource, she said. As a veteran who deployed in Iraq and grew up around firearms, she reminds buyers about safely storing weapons, a topic she takes particularly seriously after losing a cousin and sister to suicide.

Mr. Kinnard, a retired police officer, said that at his Arizona store, he often sold firearms to first-time gun owners.

“I’ve made handouts for gun safety that I give them, and I go over it with them,” Mr. Kinnard said. “I hate sending people out that don’t know what they’re doing. They want to start, but they really don’t have any idea of the gun safety part of it.”

Dylan Freedman contributed reporting.

The post Push for Online Gun Sales Meets a Surprising Opponent: Small Gun Dealers appeared first on New York Times.