US Congress candidate posts video showing it takes ‘less time to buy a weapon of war than a cup of coffee’

Dan Helmer shows how the 'gun show loophole' for requiring background checks works

A Democratic Congressional candidate posted a campaign video showing how it took “less time to buy a weapon of war than a cup of coffee”.

The video showed Dan Helmer, who running in the US state of Virginia, buying a semiautomatic weapon at a gun show in Chantilly without any kind of background check. He said in the video the gun is “functionally similar” to what the US Army veteran carried on his tour of duty in Afghanistan. “If I buy from you, do I have to register and do a background check and all that stuff?,” Mr Helmer asked the seller, who responded simply: “no”. The candidate then pushed him on providing a social security number, but ultimately was able to purchase the gun with just a Virginia state identification card and a verbal confirmation that he was not a felon.

Mr Helmer is in a six-way race to secure the Democratic party nomination in order to run against Republican and current Congress member Barbara Comstock. She has gotten an ‘A’ rating from the powerful lobbying group the National Rifle Association (NRA) as Democrats in the district scramble to push for stricter gun laws in light of the recent mass shooting at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

It is difficult to verify Mr Helmer’s claim that the whole process of buying the weapon took less than ten minutes but the interaction with the seller was not laborious. He tweeted how “terrifying” it was to be able to do it so painlessly.

Federal law allows for the so-called “gun show loophole” which allows people to buy weapons at trade shows such as the one Mr Helmer attended without the requirement of a background check. Essentially, “if someone purchases a gun from a private seller — such as a friend, family member, or even a stranger who’s not a licensed gun dealer — then no background check is required,” Vox reported.

In a statement to The Hill newspaper, he said: “There is a huge loophole in the law that makes it legal to buy such weapons from private dealers without doing a background check. This is insane, and it is dangerous. This weapon is similar to the weapons I carried in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there’s no reason it should be this easy to get one.”

Mr Helmer’s campaign has said the candidate supports a ban on assault weapons, like the one used by the gunman in the Parkland shooting and the 2017 Las Vegas massacre during which 58 people were shot dead. He also supports banning bump stocks, which are devices that make semi-automatic weapons fire more bullets quickly, and high-capacity magazines.

Ms Comstock won the district in 2016 with just over half the vote, which surprised Democrats considering President Donald Trump had lost the same district in the presidential election that year.