The tragedy in Aurora, Colorado has thrust gun laws into the national spotlight. Everyone has the right to bare arms, but in Iowa and Illinois, prospective gun owners are subject to a background check.
Unfortunately, those background checks can't uncover everything about a person -- like a history of mental illness or a future plan to commit a crime. And these are factors that can make the job of a firearms vendor very difficult.
Randy Fulton is a firearms salesman out of R & K Arms Gun Shop in Davenport and there's more to his job than a simple transaction; like learning about his customers --
"I always talk to them. Before I will sell them a gun, I will talk to them." While he fully believes in the Second Amendment right to bear arms, he doesn't think everyone should have access to a weapon.
"It's up to the gun shops discretion on whether or not a gun sale is made," said Fulton. Firearms vendors in Iowa are required by state law to run an FBI background check on anyone who tries to buy a gun. Paperwork with a series of questions that a prospective gun owner must answer about his or herself.
"Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective? If you answer yes to that, you're out of it," Fulton said. But he realizes that people don't answer honestly, that background checks don't uncover everything about a person.
"How is anybody supposed to know what someone's mental state is?"
A background check just show what illegal activity that person has been caught doing. But what about what's happening in someone's life, at that very moment?
"If we feel uncomfortable that the person is unstable, addicted to marijuana, alcohol, if they look like they're twitching. Then, it's a no sale," said Fulton. "I don't even want you in my store."
But it's what happens when a legal firearms vendor is not part of the transaction that truly worries Fulton.
"Craiglist,, the newspaper ... A private party sale is where one individual can sell a gun to another individual and there is no background checks or anything else." These gun sales are legal in Iowa and Illinois, when everyone has the right documentation. But Fulton says this is also how weapons get into the wrong hands.
"Is it going to happen? Yes. Are we going to be able to stop every single one of them? No," Fulton said. "But we can all do our part to make sure we do what's necessary to make sure these guns don't fall into hands that they shouldn't be."
