Kim Kardashian West is a California socialite who is mostly famous for being famous… don’t ask me how that works, because I don’t understand the dynamics of it myself.

What does matter is that she has 34.4 MILLION followers on Twitter, and so when she says something like this…

He purchased the gun & ammo ONLINE! How is it so easy to purchase guns online!!! Does this not sicken you? No background checks needed!!!!!

— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) August 13, 2015

… it matters, because many of her followers simply assume her claims to be true.

Unfortunately, Mrs. West tweeted out incorrect information, and we’re hoping that if we show her where she was misinformed, she might be gracious enough to share this article to those 34.4 million readers, many of whom were also likely misinformed.

There are a number of sites on the Internet where you can “buy a gun online.”

We’re most familiar with Bud’s Gun Shop, Guns America, and Gunbroker as sites where guns are bought and sold online, and also very familiar with local FFLs who do a large portion of their business “online.”

But can you really buy a gun online? The answer is a resounding “no.”

If you go to any of the sites listed above, you’ll learn that these web sites only facilitate transactions.

They’ll let you pick out a firearm. They’ll facilitate payment for that firearm. But unlike Amazon.com or Zappos.com or other conventional goods retails, the purchase on these sites must specify a local federal firearms license (FFL) holder to actually receive shipment of the gun “bought online.”

The seller (a federal firearms licensee) will then ship the sold firearm to the receiving gun dealer (another FFL), not the buyer. 

The buyer must then go to the receiving FFL, and fill out a ATF Form 4473, and then pass an FBI NICS background check before taking possession of a firearm.

You can’t really buy a gun online. You can select it and pay for it online, but you have to buy it in person, as you would any other gun from a gun shop.

But how did felon D____ C_____* Get his gun then?

Mrs West’s tweet (above) was part of a string of tweets reacting to the mass killing of six children and two adults by a violent ex-convict. The female adult victim was the felon’s ex-wife. One of the murdered children was the murderer’s son. Local news claimed that the gun was purchased “online.”

A police source said C_____ bought the gun online within the last two weeks.

So if he couldn’t pass a background check as you would have to when purchasing a firearm online, how did the killer get his gun?

Unfortunately we don’t know the details at this time, but we have a pretty good idea.

There are numerous sites on the Internet where you can put up a Craiglist-like “for sale” advertisement, and these are nothing more or less than the digital version of the old newspaper classified.

These are not “online sales,” as anyone buying something they found on Craiglist or a similar site will attest.

These are merely advertising pages that enable two parties to get together and conduct a private transaction.

We can state with a good degree of certainty that the murderer simply found the listing for one of these online classifieds, and then carried out a private, in person transaction.

“Online guns sales” simply do not exist in any form or fashion, and claiming they do is incorrect.

We understand that Mrs. West has stated in the past that she is in favor of gun control and that she is uncomfortable around them, and we respect her position, even though we feel differently about firearms.

We do hope, however, that she values her 34.4 million Twitter fans, and that she’d be willing to share the truth about “online gun sales,” now that she understands that they don’t really exist.

Update: The family of the victims are attempting to raise money on GoFundMe for travel and burial costs.

* Bearing Arms has a standing policy of not naming mass or spree killers.