I sent the following to the editors of Politifact regarding their 1/5/16 article "Obama: Violent felons can buy guns online without background checks". While I politely took them to task on a few inaccuracies, re the OP's assertion here, these inaccuracies did not amount to an advantage for gun control advocates. On the contrary, Politifact's errors in the piece should be welcomed by gun rights advocates, since they misstate some things in their favor.

(1) One of the recurring confusions with "internet gun sales" as it goes to gun policy discussion in the news is that there is currently no compact term to describe gun sales where buyer and seller use a Craigslist-style website to find each other and then conduct the sale in-person. Craigslist itself does not allow firearm sales on its site, so you can't get away with saying "Craigslist gun sales". In casual conversation, I personally say "Craigslist-style gun sales" because everybody instantly knows what this means. But top policy-makers and Presidents can't use "Craigslist-style", it's not appropriate for many reasons. By far the largest Craigslist-style website is called Armslist, the name itself belying how similarly they operate.

The phrase "internet gun sales" is temptingly short and sweet, but it is inaccurate. By default, "I bought it off the internet" has come to imply a shipped good, such as from Amazon or Ebay. But the type of gun sales we're trying to specify here are by definition NOT shipped, since the only way to ship guns legally is for seller to ship to a licensed gun dealer near buyer, then buyer must go in to the dealer and pass a background check. This particular misunderstanding seems to account for about 90% of the objections we hear from gun rights advocates whenever the issue of gun sales involving the internet comes up. And while it is technically an important point to know about, various investigations by Mayors Against Illegal Guns and others have determined beyond a shadow of a doubt that Craigslist-style gun sales account for a massive number of gun sales each year, and also that it is clear that prohibited buyers are using sites like Armslist. So beware when gun rights partisans simply wave away the phrase "internet gun sales" as not counting in discussions of background checks. They very much DO count, but to be accurate you must (somehow) specify the non-shipped category only.

I think that the answer is probably for policy makers and Presidents to just do what we do when a group is know by it's leader: use the leader's name. When someone says, Charles Manson killed nine people, we know that he directed his followers to kill them. But we don't bother getting lost in the details. I think when we want to specify "face-to-face gun sales where buyer and seller found each other on the internet", we should just say Armslist. Armslist is by far the biggest site like it, and people need to know what they do to understand the scope of the problem. Surveys indicate that probably half of all Americans don't even KNOW that it's currently legal in most states to sell a gun in this manner, so I think Armslist has earned more notoriety for this than they have received. Let's give it to them.

(2) Your piece said: "Still, only a small slice of gun purchases take place online. In a December Quinnipiac poll, just 3 percent of gun owners said they obtained a gun from an online seller."

Here is the question as asked by that poll: "From which of the following sources have you obtained your firearms; gun shows, family members or friends, online sellers, local and chain stores, or other private sellers?"

Notice that in the list of options, the option immediately following "online sellers" begins with the word "local". then immediately after that, "other private sellers". If you think about this for a minute, it's easy to see that the way this is constructed might very well prime the hearer to interpret "online seller" as meaning "not local". That is, shipped internet goods such as discussed above. But this would automatically mean a category of sales which is distinct from the one to which the President was referring in his remarks, because shipped guns must go through background checks. So to the extent that poll respondents heard "online sellers" to mean a shipped purchase, your comment in the article about the 3% would be inaccurate. When you stop to think about how we use the language of commerce, and consider a poll respondent read off a list of choices like this, it seems quite likely that of the respondents who bought their guns in face to face meetups from sellers they found online, would place their sale in the "other private seller" category rather than the "online sellers" category, since there is no other category into which you can put Amazon-style shipping sellers, but you can put the local face to face meetup internet sellers in "other private seller".

Furthermore, if "other private seller" did not include strangers found online for face to face meetup sales, and you exclude all the other categories in the list...then what would be left? They're not friends or family, they're not gun show, they're not independent gun store, they're not chain retailer, and they're not Amazon-style internet shipper. So, what are they, if not Craigslist-style local internet seller? I would submit that this is the only category of seller who fits into this category, simply because it is the only category I can think of which is not obviously represented elsewhere in the list. And it is not obvious that it should fit into "online seller" for the reasons already given.

(3) The very last line of your article reads: "That seller would have to be in the same state as the buyer."

If this statement was made in another context, it could perhaps be argued to be unclear as to whether the speaker was intending the phrase "would have to be" to mean "must by necessity be", or to mean "can only be within the law if he is".

However, you begin the including paragraph with: "The kind of transaction Obama described is possible, though illegal, and more complicated than his comment suggests." This tells us quite clearly I think that, in the sentence in question, what you are saying is the former: that in the type of gun sales to which the President referred in his remarks, that buyer and seller must, of necessity, be in the same state. This is clearly false, since for example, the City of Chicago actually shares a border with the neighboring State of Indiana. And bootlegging contraband imports across the state line and directly into Chicago is not only possible, it is practically a time-honored tradition.

However, even if your sentence was taken to have the latter meaning, it would still be wrong. Beyond not requiring them to do background checks, most states do not even require an unlicensed private seller to see proof of in-state residency to complete the sale with legal impunity. So besides "Where do you want to meet", these sales are quite literally no-questions-asked. Not are you 21, are you 18, are you an in-state resident. Nothing. Which is why this situation is in need of a legislative fix.

(4) Illegal Buyer vs Seller vs Sale. Another entire category of linguistic confusion arises when phrases are used such as "an illegal gun sale". This happens because many, perhaps most Americans, don't realize that in most states an unlicensed gun seller can sell a gun to a prohibited buyer with no legal downside to himself. If the seller has no specific reason to know or suspect buyer is prohibited, then he's off the hook. I was disappointed in your article that you did not make this point clearer. Much of the confusion as to the need for expanding background checks arises from this simple confusion. A buyer can be illegal, and the sale can be illegal, and yet the seller has committed no crime. It's a simple thing to say, and include in any such discussion, but it clears away much misunderstanding.