The Castle gun show bill (H.R. 96) masquerades as reform--imposing bureaucratic restrictions aimed at shutting down gun shows--without fixing real problems of the National Instant Check System (NICS). Despite changes from the Lautenberg juvenile justice amendment of 1999 that it is based on, this bill fails to address gun owners` most significant concerns--and in several areas is even more restrictive than the failed Lautenberg amendment.

• H.R. 96 makes no instant check improvements. Unlike some previous gun show bills, the bill provides no funding for criminal history upgrades.
• H.R. 96 creates gun owner registration. "Special firearms event operators" would have to submit names of all "vendors" to the U.S. Justice Department both before and after the show--whether or not any of the vendors sold a gun. A private citizen who enters a gun show hoping to sell or trade a firearm, but who does not find a buyer and leaves with his own gun, would be on file with the Justice Department forever as a "special firearms event vendor." This gun owner registration provision is more restrictive than the Lautenberg amendment.
• H.R. 96 requires registration of gun shows. This bureaucratic requirement would allow an anti-gun administration to harass event organizers for paperwork violations. It would also allow government agents to harass gun owners who gather for purposes other than selling guns. This registration provision is more restrictive than the Lautenberg amendment.
• H.R. 96 allows harassment of show organizers and vendors. The bill allows inspection, at a gun show, of a show promoter`s or dealer`s entire business records--including records of transactions that occurred at other shows or at a dealer`s licensed place of business. These inspections are time consuming for licensees and highly intrusive; conducting business at a gun show while simultaneously undergoing a compliance inspection would be impossible.
• H.R. 96 creates massive bureaucratic red tape. As in the Lautenberg amendment, the bill allows enormous leeway for "such regulations as the Attorney General shall prescribe," a power that would undoubtedly be abused by an anti-gun administration to regulate gun shows out of business.

• H.R. 96 turns casual conversations into "gun show sales." As with the Lautenberg legislation, a person could still agree to sell a gun to a neighbor in a conversation over the backyard fence; but if the same conversation took place at a gun show, the background check requirement would forever apply to that gun. This unworkable and unenforceable system would even apply to a gun that a seller and buyer talk about at a gun show, but don`t have with them. Any realistic background check requirement must be limited to sales at an actual gun show, during the gun show, of guns that are present at the show.

• H.R. 96 does not provide for true instant checks. The biggest controversy during the 1999 debate on gun show legislation was how long a "delay period" should be allowed for investigation of a questionable background check. The Lautenberg amendment allowed 3 business days--the same as current law for dealers at their regular places of business. The Dingell amendment passed in the House allowed 24 hours. H.R. 96 follows Lautenberg`s lead--but a 3 business day wait does not work for a 2-day weekend gun show.
• The H.R. 96 "24-hour" wait is a smokescreen. The bill provides that the wait "may" be reduced to 24 hours--if a state applies for the privilege after improving its records. But with no real incentives for states or the federal government to improve records, there is no reason to think that the 24-hour check would ever be achieved. Even if a state did switch to a 24-hour check, the change is strictly optional and could be reversed by an anti-gun state government. And with a 3-business day period still allowed to check out-of-state records, a few large states could drag down the whole scheme for all transfers across the nation.
• H.R. 96 gives no priority to gun show checks. Gun show checks should be expedited over others, simply due to the temporary nature of these events and the distances both sellers and buyers travel to attend them.

Most importantly, H.R. 96 ignores the real problem--multiple government studies prove gun shows are not a source of "crime guns."

• The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report "Firearms Use by Offenders" found that less than 1% of U.S. "crime guns" come from gun shows. This 2001 study was based on interviews with 18,000 prison inmates and is the largest such study ever conducted by the government.

• The BJS study is consistent with previous federal studies. A 2000 BJS study, "Federal Firearms Offenders, 1992-98," found only 1.7% of federal prison inmates obtained their gun from a gun show. Similarly, a National Institute of Justice 1997 study, "Homicide in Eight U.S. Cities," reported less than 2% of criminal guns come from gun shows.