TORONTO – Three days after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, semi-automatic rifles and handguns are still readily available online from vendors only a short drive south of Toronto.
It’s business as usual at Armslist.com, a website for buyers and sellers of firearms. On Monday, a private seller in West Seneca, New York – about 170 km from downtown Toronto – listed a 9mm Luger semi-automatic rifle “brand new in box” for $800, including two 32-round magazines.
A seller in nearby North Tonawanda listed a 12-gauge Remington pump action shotgun for $350. And in Rochester, someone listed a 380 ACP double-action Grendel pistol Monday for $250.
A Buffalo resident put her AK-47 semi-automatic rifle with 30-round magazine and Colt AR-15 semi-automatic rifle for sale on Armslist on Monday with the message: “After what has happened in CT, I no longer want these weapons in my possession.”
Contacted by Global News, the seller (who declined to give her name) said she isn’t sure why the latest school shooting spurred her to sell the guns. “I don’t even have kids,” she said. “I just don’t want them.”
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Private gun sales are regulated by U.S. federal laws as well as restrictions that vary from state to state. A Canadian resident hoping to purchase a gun in the U.S. would have to find a seller willing to break the law. Even then, a Canadian buyer would have to bring it back over the border illegally.
Armslist, launched in 2009, includes a disclaimer reminding users to “comply with local, state, federal and international law.”
The site is coming under fire, though. Only days before the Connecticut mass shooting, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Armslist on behalf of the brother of Illinois murder victim Jitka Vesel.
The first lawsuit of its kind, it alleges the website facilitated the sale of a gun to her killer, a Canadian resident. (Dmitry Smirnov of Surrey, B.C. pleaded guilty last year to killing Vesel in April 2011 near Chicago and is serving a life sentence.)
An undercover investigation by the City of New York found that more than half of the gun sellers on Armslist agreed to sell a gun to a person who said he could not pass a background check, in violation of federal law.
eBay banned the sale of firearms in 1999 and Craigslist followed suit in 2007.
“Website operators should not enable killers to illegally obtain guns at the click of a mouse,” reads a message on the Brady Center website. “Guns should be sold with the greatest care, to prevent arming dangerous people with the means to kill.”
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