I just read the first comment to my post below, started to reply to it, and decided to make a blog entry instead.

At this point, calling your senator doesn't matter - opponents of the bill attached a "poison-pill" amendment (extension of the Assault Weapons Ban), and the entire bill was killed to prevent the AWB from being extended.

As for the rest of csuperman7's screed, does the manufacturer of any weapon (down to kitchen knives) bear responsibility when their product is being used to kill someone illegally. Remember, there are times in this country when you can legitimately kill someone (usually when the person you kill is breaking the law himself).

For that matter, is Ford responsible when a bank-robbery getaway driver uses a Taurus to evade the police (especially if he kills or wounds someone in the process)? I use this analogy because it is an example of a legitimate product being used for its designed purpose in a crime. The criminal committed the crime - using a tool that has legitimate uses. Why punish the manufacturer for making a legal product?

From csuperman7: "If a company sells a gun without a background check to some random person and that person kills someone, isn't that negligence? If it were an individual, not a company you could put the seller away for years (illegally selling a firearm, willful neglect to murder, or with a good DA even manslaughter."

Yes, it is negligence. Furthermore, it is already illegal for a company or a individual who is determined to be a firearms dealer  to sell a gun without a background check. The BAFTE makes that determination, BTW, so the ballyhooed gun-show loophole is a red herring (if the BATFE decides you are a gun dealer, you need to do background checks, no matter where you sell the guns). The laws already exist to prosecute individuals and corporations who do such a thing. And the recent immunity legislation would not have changed that in the slightest, being targeted at civil actions.

I saw an episode of Law and Order a while back where the premise was that a misogynistic nursing student obtained a semiautomatic weapon, converting it to fully automatic via instructions he got at a gun show, and mowed down a class trip of female nursing students. It turned out he had obtained the weapon via a mail-order deal in PA by identity theft. The killer talked the seller into sending it directly to the killer (instead of to a local gun store for pick-up; as the law requires for identity verification). This action by the mail-order gun dealer is illegal. When confronted with this by the investigators, the dealer tells a sob story (if he gets his license lifted, he loses his house) and says all the BATFE will do to him is slap his wrists. Come the trial, the killer cops a plea - leaving the DA unsatisfied. So the DA comes up with the "selling too many guns" theory, and proceeds to prosecute the manufacturer for manslaughter or murder (I forget which). At this point, I gave up on the show and switched off. What I want to know is, why didn't anyone prosecute the gun dealer who broke the law.

Which brings me to my point - why aren't the responsible authorities prosecuting the small number of dealers who sell firearms fraudulently? Supposedly a very small fraction of firearms dealers sell most of the firearms recovered from use in a crime. Why aren't these dealers pursued by the agents of the law in criminal court? (as opposed to interested 3rd parties in civil court - most of whose suits have been thrown out by those courts).