A billboard made from crushed firearms in Mexico near the U.S. border.
The New York Times
Interstate firearms trafficking thrives because each state regulates gun sales differently, and there is no federal limitation on the number of guns that an individual may purchase at any one time. California, Maryland, Washington, D.C., and New Jersey have laws limiting consumers to one gun per month; Texas does not. In the 2011 operation in Arizona, one defendant bought six AK-47s from one gun store, and within the space of two weeks, he bought 17 from another store. Less than a month later, he bought 20 from the same store. Three months later, he went back and bought 10 more.
Tracking the sales of guns so straw buyers can be detected is impossible in the present political environment. “The National Rifle Association has so successfully opposed a comprehensive electronic database of gun sales that the A.T.F.’s congressional appropriation explicitly prohibits establishing one,” Katherine Eban wrote in Fortune in 2012.