I recently ran a quote of the day from the Boston Globe based on their editorial Close loopholes on existing gun background checks. In it, the anti-ballistic Boston burghers assert that “Gun control advocates point out that 40 percent of all gun sales are exempt from background checks because the seller is a private party operating online or at gun shows.” This is a lie, perpetuated by the anti-gunners to justify gun control legislation for legal gun buyers. I know of two studies on the subject. The first was published in 1984 by James D. Wright and Peter H. Rossi, who interviewed roughly 600 felons who admitted to committing a crime with a firearm. The majority of them got their firearms through . . .
theft from persons who own and use firearms legally.” The majority. Which means the 40 percent stat the anti-gunners throw around re: gun show purchases could be true. Only it isn’t. In 2001, Caroline Wolf Harlow, Ph.D published a survey of convicted criminals in 1991 and 1997 who used a gun. Click here to check it out. Stats above. To repeat . . .
• In 1997 among State inmates possessing a gun, fewer than 2% bought their firearm at a flea market or gun show, about 12% from a retail store or pawnshop, and 80% from family, friends, a street buy, or an illegal source. [NB: the Brady Background Check law went into effect in 1998, after the survey period.]
When it comes to public policy, garbage in, garbage out. If proponents of civilian disarmament wish to replicate this study to justify their claim that gun show sales have risen from .7 percent to 40 percent of guns used in firearms-related crime, I’m sure The People of the Gun would help with funding.
Meanwhile, the antis and their media enablers should stop lying to the American people. Then again, how else would they convince them to surrender their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms?