Guns for everyone: shows set low bar for who can get a lethal weapon.

• Author: Comp, Nathan

In early February, I found a man willing to sell me an Italian submachine gun with a fifty-round magazine, no questions asked.

The 9mm Spectre M4 was one among thousands of weapons up for grabs at a February 6 gun show in West Bend, Wisconsin. A particularly fearsome firearm with pistol and forward-vertical grips, it is capable of firing up to 150 bullets per minute.

Used by Italian special forces, the M4 was one of nineteen firearms outlawed in 1994 under the federal assault rifle ban, which expired a decade later. Now, in 2016, it's a loophole away from prohibited hands.

"You can pick it up," the seller, a tall man with a seemingly endless string of Obama jokes, tells me, apparently sensing my reluctance.

But I can't pick it up, not legally, my lawyer has advised. With felony drug possession and bail jumping charges pending against me, it is a federal crime for me to buy the gun and for the tall man at the gun show to sell it to me.

The law, however, exempts private sellers from running background checks on people like me. As long as they aren't aware, or don't suspect, that they're making an illegal sale, there is little either party has to fear.

No business card, no company, no paperwork.

"Do you do background checks?" I ask, practically waving a huge red flag.

He shakes his head.

"No, no," he says. "We're private-party sellers."

Gun-control advocates applauded President Barack Obama's January 5 announcement that he was taking executive action to close the notorious gun-show loophole, explaining that federal law applies to everyone "in the business of selling guns."

"We know we can't stop every act of violence, every act of evil in the world," Obama said during the news conference at which he cried for the victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook. "But maybe we could try to stop one act of evil, one act of violence."

Predictably, the measures sparked outrage among Republicans and gun-control opponents, who accused the President of usurping Congress's legislative authority. Senate Republicans on an appropriations subcommittee summoned Attorney General Loretta Lynch to Capitol Hill.

"The American people are fearful that President Obama is trying to strip them of their Second Amendment rights and end-run Congress," said Senator Richard Shelby, the Republican subcommittee chair from Alabama. "The Constitution won't allow for it."

Despite the drumbeat from conservatives over the last seven years about Obama coming for their guns, the President's executive actions featured no new legislation, regulations, or amendments. In fact, they bring surprisingly little change.

They will, however, help bolster the National Instant Criminal Background Check System by including those with documented mental illness, encouraging states to provide residents' complete criminal histories, and hiring more than 200 additional examiners.

But even a beefed-up background check system won't keep the plunderbund of felons, spousal abusers, drug addicts, and the violently unstable from exploiting loopholes to avoid checks.

Under a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) rule that goes into effect July 13, individuals will no longer be able to avoid background checks by purchasing firearms through trusts or shell companies, which gun...