Team of 40 Private Investigators Bust Illegal Weapon Sales at Gun Shows

An undercover investigation funded by the City of New York found weapons were sold illegally at seven gun shows in three states — including at Bill Goodman’s Gun and Knife Show at Hara Arena — Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced Wednesday, Oct. 7.

“The gun show loophole is a deadly serious problem — and this undercover operation exposes just how pervasive and serious it is,” Bloomberg said. “This is an issue that has nothing to do with the Second Amendment; it’s about keeping guns from criminals, plain and simple.”

The investigation was done by a team of 40 private investigators, who went to gun shows in Ohio, Tennessee and Nevada from May through August. Three of those shows were Bill Goodman’s: at Hara, in Sharonville and in Nashville.

Karen Wampler, spokeswoman for Hara Arena, suggested the Dayton Daily News call Dave Goodman, who runs the gun show. Goodman could not be reached for comment Wednesday morning.
“We rent to Dave Goodman’s Gun and Knife Show and have for many years,” Wampler said. “He has been very good about following the rules of the state of Ohio, from our perspective.”
The report generated by the investigation, Gun Show Undercover, is available on the city’s website, at http://www.nyc.gov/gunshow. Bloomberg said the city would be sending it to every member of Congress, and urged Congress to pass legislation closing the “gun-show loophole,” which gun control proponents say allows people to buy guns without a background check at the shows.

The National Rifle Association has long said there is no such thing as a “gun-show loophole” and that new legislation would be pointless, as most people who sell guns at the shows are licensed dealers, who are already required to do background checks.

The investigators went to the shows to see whether sellers would engage in two types of illegal transactions. The first involvesprivate sellers selling guns to people who they thought could not pass a federal background check. The investigators would offer to purchase a weapon, then tell the seller that they probably couldn’t pass a background check.

The second involves licensed dealers conducting illegal straw sales, which are sales made to accomplices posing as buyers in order to help the real buyer avoid a criminal background check. In those cases, a maleinvestigator played the role of a person who wanted to buy a gun but couldn’t, and a female investigator played the role of the “straw” buyer who would purchase it for him.

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