SAF asks Federal investigation of alleged straw purchase by anti-gunner

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation is calling upon the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to open a criminal investigation into what may be a publicly-admitted straw purchase of a handgun in New Hampshire involving the head of a Massachusetts anti-gun organization and a columnist for the Boston Globe.

SAF Founder Alan Gottlieb said today that remarks made by John Rosenthal, head of Stop Handgun Violence and a co-founder of the anti-gun American Hunting and Shooting Association, and Globe columnist Steve Bailey during a segment on WRKO AM on July 10 “strongly suggest they were involved in an illegal gun purchase.”

“Bailey and Rosenthal traveled from Massachusetts to New Hampshire where Rosenthal reportedly asked a dealer at a gun show whether he could buy a handgun,” Gottlieb said. “When the dealer learned Rosenthal was a Massachusetts resident, he declined to sell him a gun. At that point, Rosenthal allegedly asked if a companion, who was a New Hampshire resident, could buy the gun and the dealer agreed. Rosenthal, in an interview with Gun Week, claimed that the dealer clearly knew this was a straw sale.

“The irony here,” he observed, “is that Rosenthal has tried to portray this dealer as having conducted a straw sale, but what he is also describing is a straw purchase. There are two sides to any such crime, and the buyer – and the person who initiated that purchase – would be just as criminally liable as the seller of the gun.

“We think federal authorities should find out where that gun is now, who ultimately paid for it, and whether Rosenthal, Bailey and the New Hampshire resident participated in a conspiracy to conduct this transaction,” Gottlieb noted.

“Private citizens, whether they run anti-gun organizations, write for newspapers or happen to be the anti-gun mayor of New York City, cannot conduct straw purchases or hire someone else to do it and then claim it was in the public interest,” Gottlieb concluded. “We believe a crime, or multiple crimes, may have been committed here, and we encourage the BATF to investigate. If it turns out Rosenthal, Bailey and their companion did break the law, we expect them to be prosecuted.”

Jul. 15, 2007
(Fort Worth) Star-Telegram

Don't shoot yourself in the foot during the argument

...Boston Globe columnist Steve Bailey, who was also on the show, recalled how he and Rosenthal had visited a New Hampshire gun show in 2005 to prove how easy it was for criminals to buy a handgun.

In order to do that, Bailey and Rosenthal became criminals themselves. Rosenthal, who is not a resident of New Hampshire, admitted that he attempted to buy a gun from a federally licensed dealer. That's against the law, and the dealer said no dice.

Bailey and Rosenthal had a Plan B. They brought with them a New Hampshire resident, who successfully passed the instant background check and bought the gun for them. Guess who paid for the purchase? The Globe, according to both men.

Here's a snippet from a Bailey column describing their experience:

"We settled on a .38-caliber revolver, a trashy little thing popular with thugs in cities like Boston. Made by Connecticut's Charter 2000 Inc. in New England's 'Gun Valley,' the revolver retails for $349, but my fellow New Hampshire shopper, Walter Belair, picked it up, cash and carry, for just $240. It took Belair, a former prison guard, less than 20 minutes to fill out the federal forms and get approved over the phone. It took me longer to buy a refrigerator at Sears a few weeks ago."

It is a new tactic of gun ban extremists to hide their intentions behind claims of being gun owners, shooters, etc. Consider the following two examples, which follow the advice of billionaire anti-gunner Andrew McKelvey by trying to disguise who they really are: