I mentioned in another thread that I spend time on a forum dedicated to football (proper football!) so most of the users are British or European. As with the Aurora shootings, this one is big news worldwide so it's being discussed on their board. Obviously there's a lot of misinformation and lack of knowledge floating around but I've been trying to avoid participating this time as I offered to answer questions last time and made the mistake of telling them what I owned and why. My collection got me labelled as a dangerous nutcase whereas if I listed it here you'd probably be questioning my sexuality*.

Anyway, in both threads a few people mentioned visiting a range as a tourist and renting guns. They talked about needing a state issued ID before they could rent, and being sold a hunting license for this purpose. As further evidence about how easy it is to buy a fully automatic submachine gun from every 7-11 in the country, they acted as if a tourist could also buy a firearm with just this license.

So I was wondering what would happen if a tourist did try and purchase a firearm in such a manner? I know that if they filled in the form honestly, the clerk would almost certainly pick up on it and end the sale tout suite, but would s/he do anything else such as notify law enforcement? And what if said tourist filled in the form dishonestly, maybe making up a resident alien number, or claiming to be a US citizen? I assume they'd fail the background check but would it be taken any further? Arrest? Deportation?

I really want to encourage them to try it next time they're visiting for no other reason than Bill Gates has yet to pull his finger out and invent a way for me to slap people via the internet.


* or at least it would if I hadn't recently tried this new 'take your guns boating' fad