After every firearms related tragedy, the gun control crowd trots out the same, tired proposals that in reality will solve nothing. The current solution of choice is the universal background check. It’s needed because they say 40% of the gun transfers today do not involve a background check. Even if that was true, which it isn’t, it wouldn’t have made a difference in the past few mass shooting. In these incidents the shooters obtained their weapons legally, meaning they had a background check.
But back to the 40% number. This number is getting a lot of air time lately, being used by the gun-banner-in-chief Barack Obama as well as Presidential wanna-be Hillary Clinton and the billionaire gun banner Michael Bloomberg.
- “Why wouldn’t we want to close the loophole that allows as many as 40 percent of all gun purchases to take place without a background check?”
President Obama, remarks on gun safety, March 28, 2013
- “Forty percent of guns are sold at gun shows, online sales without a background check.”
Hillary Rodham Clinton, at Manchester Community College, Oct. 5, 2015
- “There’s a loophole where you can sell guns without a background check at a gun show, 40 percent of guns are sold that way”.
Michael Bloomberg on CBS’ Face the Nation in July 2012
The problem is this statement, so widely used by liberals, has been considered to be false to mostly false by many fact-checking agencies and has been awarded the maximum number of Pinocchio’s.
First let’s look at where this statement came from. Unlike a lot of made up “facts” used by gun control advocates, this one was generated from an actual study conducted by college professors. And as we all know, college professors are notoriously fair and never prejudiced in their studies. Did your sarcasm warning device go off? If not, get it checked.
The study was written by Philip Cook of Duke University and Jens Ludwig of the University of Chicago in 1997 for National Institute of Justice (NIJ). The NIJ is a research, development and evaluation agency of the United States Department of Justice. The study was based on information obtained from a 1994 telephone survey. The survey sampled 2,568 homes, asking 115 questions about firearms and crime. These questions included:
- How many guns were in the house
- What they were used for
- How they were stored
- How they were obtained
Cook and Ludwig’s interpretation of the data indicated that 35.7 percent of respondents reported obtaining their gun from somewhere other than a licensed dealer. That was conveniently rounded up to 40 percent. That’s where the 40% number comes from. Sounds like science and math at work, right? But if you look closer into the details of the study, maybe not.
The survey did indeed sampled 2,568 homes. Of those 2,568 homes, only 251 (9.8% or 1 in 10) chose to answer the questions about firearms. Makes sense if you think about it. Someone unknown to you calls and asks how many guns are in the house, how are they stored, where did you get them. Would you answer those questions?
There was no verification that the people who answered the gun questions were really gun owners. In fact, I don’t know any real gun owners that would have answered these questions over the phone to an unknown person.
Is only 251 respondents really a representative example of the of the estimated 192 million gun owners in 1994? I don’t think so. That’s 0.00013% of known gun owners for that year.
The 40% number was derived from one question asked on the survey:
Question 28. Was the person you got this gun from a licensed firearms dealer?
Survey takers offered these answers to the people surveyed :
- Yes
- Probably was/think so
- Probably not
- No/Definitely not
- Don’t Know
- Refused
The study found that 64.3% answered either “Yes” or “Probably was/think so”, leaving 35.7% as possibly not coming from a licensed dealer, subsequently rounded up to 40%. The 64.3% was rounded down to 60% I guess. If the licensed dealer percentage was just 0.8% higher or 65.1%, would they have rounded the “not purchased from a dealer” percentage from 34.9% down to 30%? This doesn’t seem very scientific. Why round the numbers anyway?
A previous question on the survey asked “Where you got your gun”, with possible answers being: Gun store, Pawnshop, Hardware, Department, or other store and a Gun Show. Many people are not aware that any store that sells firearms has to have a Federal Firearms License (FFL). People usually only associate gun shops as being licensed firearms dealers. They could have erroneously reported they did not buy their gun from licensed dealer if the bought it from a pawnshop, Walmart, etc. Also, the majority of people selling guns at Gun Shows are actually licensed dealers so this could add to additional errors.
Question 29 on the survey asked: Did this person operate out of a regular store, or did they operate out of their home or some other place? People that aren’t aware that pawnshops and other stores selling guns requires a Federal Firearms License wouldn’t expect their neighbor who sold them a gun at his kitchen table to have an FFL, but he might.
One of the provisions of the Gun Control Act of 1968 was anyone buying and selling firearms for profit to have a Federal Firearms License. Many small time dealers who worked out of their houses had to obtain FFL’s. The number of FFL dealers peaked in 1992 at 284,117 which was shortly before this data was collected. So buying a gun out of a residence doesn’t mean it wasn’t from an FFL dealer. Incidentally, the number of FFL dealers at the end of 2014 was down to 139,224, less than half the 1992 level.
When studying the data, the researchers “adjusted” some of it. If a person responded that “Yes” the person they bought from was a licensed firearms dealer, but indicated they didn’t operate out of a store, didn’t know or refused to answer, their answer was changed to “Probably not”. This judgement call increased the number of firearms not bought from a licensed firearms dealer. Maybe this is how they reached the 35.7% level that could then be rounded up to the more eye-opening number of 40%.
Disregarding the flaws in the data collection, what this data shows (and not conclusively) is 35.7% of 251 gun sales in the early 90’s may not have been from licensed gun dealers. But today it is used to support the statement “40% of current gun sales do not incur a background check”.
The term “background check” does not appear anywhere in the survey or the study. Why? A background check to buy a firearm was not required until the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was signed into law November 30, 1993. The National Instant Check System (NICS) did not come on-line until 1998. During the interim period, firearms purchasers merely signed a form saying they were not prohibited from owning firearms and incurred a five day waiting period before picking up their firearm.
What is being Assumed is that IF in 1994, 35.7% of firearms transfers were not through a licensed dealer, that number is true today. Since background checks are required today, that further implies 35.7% of firearms transfers today do not incur a background check. That’s a bit of a stretch to me.
Something not considered when Liberals shanghaied this data was guns inherited or given as gifts. Their agenda was to show how many guns change hands without a background check, potentially becoming “crime guns”. Since there was no dealer involved when a gun is inherited or gifted, it increases the “Not a licensed dealer percentage” subsequently increasing the “No background check” percentage. But really, who gifts a gun to someone who may use it in a criminal activity? Most gifted guns are to relatives. And criminals don’t wait around for grandpa to die hoping they will inherit a gun so they can commit crimes.
The data used was collected over two decades ago. Does data two decades old really reflect the current status of anything? Would a survey on cellphone usage done in 1994 have any relevance today? In 2013, Politifact.com looked into the study and asked Professor Cook if the numbers were still relevant today. His reply,” The answer is I have no idea. This survey was done almost 20 years ago. … It’s clear there are a lot of transactions that are not through dealers. How many, we’re not really clear on it. … We would say it’s a very old number.” Politifact.com rated the “40% statement” as half-true. Politifact.com
Sales between private individuals are not the crime gun pipeline Liberals would have you think. As times change, the people change with them. Twenty or thirty years ago, a person would think nothing about advertising their old hunting rifle in the local newspaper. Nowadays, people are more concerned with liability in anything they do.
Today, some private sellers make copies of the buyer’s driver’s license to prove the residency of the buyer. Others will only sell to people who have concealed carry permits because that means they underwent a background check. Think about that. All fifty States have concealed carry laws which allow a person to walk around with a background check in their wallet or purse. So many person to person gun sales DO involve a background check.
But there are unscrupulous people that will sell to anybody to make a buck. They’re called lawbreakers. They don’t obey the law. More laws won’t help. Even harsh penalties won’t help. A woman broke four Federal laws buying a gun for her out-of-State, convicted felon boyfriend who used it to kill a police officer who recently had a baby. The possible maximum sentence for the woman would be twenty years in prison; actual sentence – One year probation. Read the Story
Let’s review the real facts of the “40% of the gun transfers today do not involve a background check” statement.
- The data used is over 20 years old collected in 1994.
- The number of people answering the “gun” questions in the survey was too small to really represent the gun owners.
- There was no process to verify that those that said they were gun owners were really gun owners.
- The study never claimed 40% of the gun transfers do not involve a background check.
- One of the writers of the study recently stated it is unclear if the study has any relevance today.
- Liberals fabricated their “40%” claim based on the questionable findings of the 1997 study.
Additionally:
- Just because a firearms transfer didn’t have a background check doesn’t mean it’s going to be used in a bank robbery.
- Just because a firearms transfer didn’t go through a licensed dealer doesn’t mean there wasn’t a background check.
So when you hear someone repeating the 40% lie, reply with, “That’s not true. The study you are referring to uses 20 years old flawed data that determined 35.7% of just 251 gun transfers in 1994 didn’t go through a licensed gun dealer, not that 40% of all gun transfers in 2015 do not incur a background check. In fact, one of the writers of the study recently stated in 2013 that he has no idea if the study has any relevance today.”