Straw Purchasing

The offense of purchasing a firearm from a licensed dealer on behalf of another person who is legally prohibited from owning one, or who wishes to avoid a firearm being registered in their own name, while falsely certifying on the required purchase form that the buyer is the actual, intended owner of the weapon. Under United States federal law, a straw purchase is prosecuted as a distinct offense from the underlying prohibited person's unlawful possession, because it is the certifying purchaser, not the intended recipient, who commits the specific act of making a false statement on a federal firearms transaction record; the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act of 2022 created an explicit federal straw purchasing offense, separate from the general false-statement provision previously used to prosecute the same conduct. Law enforcement and firearms-trafficking researchers have documented straw purchasing as one of the principal channels by which firearms move from the licensed retail market into illegal trafficking networks and to buyers who could not pass a background check themselves.