Explosives were found "rigged on remote control cars" (in San Bernardino)

[gratuitous]

40. Thanks for your response

Are there any statistics from more recently than five years ago? Are there any studies that show how many straw purchases are made, and how many are prosecuted? 10 years and $250,000 sounds steep, but how many straw buyers actually run into those maximums? One person in New York doing eight years in connection with a particularly heinous crime sounds like a good bust, but if the person hadn't confessed and stuck to her story of the gun being stolen, I wonder if she would have been charged at all?

It seems that as long as the straw buyer is willing to stick to a lie, the law doesn't have much teeth. "I didn't know Twitchy McSquinteye was going to go on a rampage" is a poor excuse, but it seems likely to let the straw buyer off the hook. That would seem to be a promising avenue for Congress to make a new law for straw buyers: If the psychopath you bought for goes nuts, you're doing the time for his crime.