Aug 7, 2013 3 min read

Say you’re criminally mentally ill, or have a felony conviction that has been following you around, but you really, really want to get your hands on an assault rifle without having to answer a bunch of pesky questions. Well, since you’re in America, you’re in luck. The weapon of your dreams is just a few mouse clicks away on your home computer.

Third Way, described by the Washington Post as a centrist think tank, conducted a study to determine how hard it would be to find and buy weapons online without any sort of a background check. The answer: pretty darned easy.

According to a report in the Post, Third Way’s research centered on Armslist.com, which serves as a middleman of sorts for private gun sellers and those wishing to buy, and looked at listings in 10 states with U.S. senators who voted against compromise legislation on background checks earlier this year. It found, at any given time during June and July, about 15,000 guns for sale, more than a third of them semi-automatic weapons. About 6,200 of those guns were for sale in our neighbor to the west, Ohio.

There has been a lot of attention to closing the so-called gun show loophole, which allows anyone – felon, sick would-be mass killer, etc. – to saunter into gun shows in some states, plunk their money down and walk out with high-powered weaponry, no questions asked. But Third Way social policy and politics director Lanae Erickson Hatalsky said the ability to easily purchase assault weapons and other guns online, without scrutiny, “is the biggest loophole in the background-check system.”

Of course, the National Rifle Association, which once represented sportsmen and legitimate gun aficionados but is now a very well-paid shill for gun manufacturers, opposes any attempt to bolster the background-check system, but we believe it’s time that our representatives in Washington, D.C., ignore the threats of retribution by the NRA and do what is best for the country: use reasonable measures to improve the chances of keeping weapons away from those who should not possess them.

We have said many times that no law or set of laws can prevent every deadly act by killers determined to get their hands on guns, but we can at least make it more difficult, and perhaps even stop some of them. Preventing just one gun death is still a worthy goal.