SALT LAKE CITY (ABC 4 News) – If you watch someone fire an AR-15, it’s easy to see how powerful they can be. It's a semi-automatic assault rifle similar to one of the guns James Holmes used last week to kill 12 people, and injure at least 58 more. How easy it is to buy a weapon like this in Utah?
Wednesday ABC 4’s Brian Carlson walked into to a Kearns gun store to find out.
Manager: "How are you doing?”
Carlson: “Good. How are you?
Manager: “Good."
Carlson asked the manager at Impact Guns, if he sold AR-15's. He showed Carlson where to find to them.
Manager: "They're all straight back up against that back wall, back there.”
Carlson: “Will do. Thanks Guy."
Carlson walked to the back, looked at what they had on the wall, and the manager showed him a few options.
Manager: "So this one's an excellent buy, if you don't mind jumping into the thousand price tag."
Carlson handled a few and asked several questions.
Carlson: "Can you get the dust free mags with this too?”
Manager: “Yah. Yah."
When Carlson found one he liked, he asked how soon he could have it.
Manager: "If you were to say right now, yah, I like this rifle, I want to take it – I would go grab the paperwork and get you started on the paperwork, and call in a background on your driver's license, the whole process would take about five minutes. While you're filling out the paperwork, I'd grab the box, and then as long as the background check comes back approved, we double check the paperwork, make sure there's no mistakes on that, hand you the box, and you're out the door.”
Carlson: “There you go."
Just to be clear, Carlson asked if that's all he had to do.
Manager: "Does your driver's license have your current address on it?”
Carlson: “It does.
Manager: “Then that's all we need man."
So, he showed Carlson the paperwork.
Manager: "It's a federal form called the 4473.”
Carlson: “K.”
Manager: “It has some rather invasive questions that we're not totally happy about.”
Carlson: “Okay.”
Manager: “But the federal government requires from us."
After that, Carlson asked about buying some ammo.
Manager: "This is pretty much as close to military style ammunition without actually enlisting."
The bullets were relatively cheap.
Manager: "There's a box of 20 for 8 bucks."
And the Manager said Carlson could buy as many he wanted.
Manager: "A lot of these weird restrictions are California or are no longer valid because of the assault weapons ban sunseted."
In fact, in Utah, that's how it works for any gun you want to buy.
Manager: "There's no restrictions on the amount of ammunition in Utah, there's no restrictions on the amount of firearms in Utah. If you wanted to come in here and buy 20 firearms, and I had 20 firearms in stock, you'd be leaving with 20 firearms.”
Carlson: “Crazy. That's the law.”
Manager: “That's how it works. Yah."
