"...nor do they perform background checks "
now THAT is a flat out lie.
you have to do a NI check just like everywhere else, unless it's a FTF sale.
and guess what, if he didn't have prove of Maine Residency (driver's license) then the person who wold him that guns is in a shitload of trouble.
Well, there's also the possibility of forgery. I'm sure its different now, but
for the longest time, Maine DL's were the top forged DLs amongst college
students and the like, who used them to buy alcohol while underage.
Even if he bought the gun from a dealer, theres nothing really in the NICS system
that proves the veracity of someone's legal residency. The way
the system is set up, it's simply a flag check. If the query comes back with
no flags, the buyer gets his gun. Granted, he has to break federal laws to
do it, but does anyone really think that a guy buying a gun for nefarious
pupouses really -cares- about federal law? (Not to mention, enforcement
is nearly impossible, in terms of forgeries, unless the guy is a perpetual
abuser of the system and is selling guns to criminals on a regular
basis.) Even "prohibited persons" can acquire guns this way by using
stolen or possibly even completely fictitcious identities.
BTW, I'm not defending the system, in retrospect I posted this to point out how
bogus and worthless the whole US gun control system is. If it's this easy for
someone to "wallhack" then why even have it? All it does is
serve to piss off and inconvenience law abiding citizens. The system
may have inadvertantly blocked a few -really- dumb criminals here and
there, but I'm sure it's blocked far more non-criminals that were trying to
buy guns... (eg, through delays and false denials due to misidentification.).
-Mike