thumb|300px|right| [[Houston, Texas|Houston gun show at the George R. Brown Convention Center in March 2007]]
In the United States, a gun show is an event where promoters generally rent large public venues and then rent tables for display areas for dealers of guns and related items, and charge admission for buyers. The majority of guns for sale at gun shows are modern sporting firearms. Show promoters charge vendors fees for display tables (from $20 to $145) and booths (from $200 to $400) and charge admission fees (from $5 to $50) for the public. In addition to guns, ammunition, knives, militaria, books and other items are sold. Most gun shows have 2,500 to 15,000 attendees over a two-day period. At the largest gun shows, over 1,000 firearms are sold over two days.
Restrictions
Under the Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA), firearm dealers with a Federal Firearms License (FFL) were prohibited from doing business at gun shows (they were only permitted to do business at the address listed on their license). That changed with the enactment of the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986 (FOPA), which allows FFLs to transfer firearms at gun shows provided they follow the provisions of the GCA and other pertinent federal regulations. In 1999, ATF reported that between 50% and 75% of the vendors at gun shows had FFLs. As of August 2013, 33 states do not require background checks for sales of firearms by private individuals, while 17 states and Washington, D.C., do require background checks for some or all private firearm sales. This is in contrast to sales by gun stores and other Federal Firearms License holders, who are required by federal law to perform background checks of all buyers, and to record all sales, regardless of venue (i.e. private sales).
Research and studies
In 2000, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) published "Following the Gun", its analysis of more than 1,530 trafficking investigations over a two-and-a-half-year period and found gun shows to have the second highest number of trafficked guns per investigation, after corrupt FFL dealers. (Straw purchasers were the most common channel, but averaged a relatively small number of trafficked guns per investigation compared to corrupt FFLs and gun shows.) These investigations involved a total of 84,128 firearms that had been diverted from legal to illegal commerce. All told, the report identified more than 26,000 firearms that had been illegally trafficked through gun shows in 212 separate investigations. The report stated that:
<blockquote>A prior review of ATF gun show investigations shows that prohibited persons, such as convicted felons and juveniles, do personally buy firearms at gun shows and gun shows are sources of firearms that are trafficked to such prohibited persons. The gun show review found that firearms were diverted at and through gun shows by straw purchasers, unregulated private sellers, and licensed dealers. Felons were associated with selling or purchasing firearms in 46 percent of the gun show investigations. Firearms that were illegally diverted at or through gun shows were recovered in subsequent crimes, including homicide and robbery, in more than a third of the gun show investigations. The remaining 99.2% of inmates reported obtaining firearms from other sources, including "From a friend/family member" (36.8%), "Off the street/from a drug dealer" (20.9%), "From a fence/black market source" (9.6%), "From a pawnshop", "From a flea market", "From the victim", or "In a burglary". 9% of inmates replied "Don't Know/Other" to the question of where they acquired a firearm and 4.4% refused to answer.
In 2011, economists Mark Duggan and Randi Hjalmarsson at the University of Maryland and Brian Jacob from the University of Michigan released a paper which stated that gun shows do not lead to substantial increases in either gun homicides or gun suicides.
ATF criminal investigations at gun shows
From 2004 to 2006, ATF conducted surveillance and undercover investigations at 195 gun shows (approximately 2% of all shows). Specific targeting of suspected individuals (77%) resulted in 121 individual arrests and 5,345 firearms seizures. Seventy nine of the 121 ATF operation plans were known suspects previously under investigation.
Regarding the trafficking of firearms from the U.S. into Mexico, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report in June 2009 that stated:
<blockquote>While it is impossible to know how many firearms are illegally smuggled into Mexico in a given year, about 87 percent of firearms seized by Mexican authorities and traced in the last 5 years originated in the United States, according to data from Department of Justice's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). According to U.S. and Mexican government officials, these firearms have been increasingly more powerful and lethal in recent years. Many of these firearms come from gun shops and gun shows in Southwest border states.</blockquote>
The GAO report has been corroborated through other sources. William Newell, Special Agent in Charge of ATF's Phoenix Field Division, testified before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee in March 2009, stating, "Drug traffickers are able to obtain firearms and ammunition more easily in the U.S., including sources in the secondary market such as gun shows and flea markets. Depending on State law, the private sale of firearms at those venues often does not require record keeping or background checks prior to the sale." The ATF has also reported that, "Trends indicate the firearms illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border are becoming more powerful. ATF has analyzed firearms seizures in Mexico from FY 2005–07 and identified the following weapons most commonly used by drug traffickers: 9mm pistols; .38 Super pistols; 5.7mm pistols; .45-caliber pistols; AR-15 type rifles; and AK-47 type rifles." However, this is based only on the weapons sent to the ATF to be traced, a small portion of all firearms seized by the Mexican government, and the extent to which they are representative of all seized firearms is disputed. According to Raul Benitez, a security expert at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, "Mexico's southern border with Guatemala has long been an entry point for such weapons and today could account for 10 to 15 percent coming through." William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott have described Mexico as a "virtual arms bazaar", where one can purchase a wide variety of military weapons from international sources: "fragmentation grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers." In addition, they say that Mexican drug cartels have long-established drug- and gun-running ties with Latin American revolutionary movements such as Colombia's FARC. All private citizens must wait, typically months, before receiving the tax stamp for the $200 tax paid, authorizing taking possession of the already paid-for fully automatic firearm. Until in receipt of the tax stamp, the Class III dealer retains control of the fully automatic firearm. In addition, only fully automatic firearms manufactured before the Firearm Owner's Protection Act of 1986 are permitted to be transferred. No fully automatic firearms recovered in Mexico have been traced to the United States.