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Just one in five Americans obtains gun without background check, survey finds
The share of Americans who obtained a gun without first undergoing a background check is dramatically lower than previous estimates, researchers at Harvard and Northeastern universities have determined. The finding reshapes one of the most prominent assumptions of the US gun control debate.
Just 22% of current gun owners who acquired a firearm within the past two years did so without a background check, according to a new national survey by public health researchers at Harvard and Northeastern universities shared in advance with the Trace and the Guardian.
For years, politicians and researchers have estimated that as many as 40% of gun transfers are conducted without a background check – a statistic based on an extrapolation from a 1994 survey. Gun rights activists had decried that estimate as outdated and inaccurate.
The new survey, published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that the current proportion of gun sales conducted without a background check is about half of the figure cited by prominent Democratic gun control advocates, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
It also found that gun owners in states that require background checks on all private gun sales were much less likely to report acquiring a gun without a background check than those in states with no universal background check law – a potential indication that efforts to boost screenings at the local level are succeeding, even in the absence of federal legislation.
The study’s authors hailed the new statistics as good news. “We’ve been moving in the right direction,” said Deborah Azrael, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health.
Background checks screen for individuals who are not permitted by law to own a gun, including criminals and those who pose a public safety threat. But the expansion of background checks has been a key political battleground in the gun control conversation.
Since the 2012 massacre at the Sandy Hook elementary school, Obama and other Democrats have made the case for new gun laws by arguing that as many as 40% of guns in America are sold without a criminal background check – a statistic criticized by gun rights groups.
The figure was revived again in the 2016 presidential election. In October 2015, Hillary Clinton earned “three pinocchios” from the Washington Post Fact Checker blog when she said during a campaign rally that “40% of guns are sold at gun shows, online sales”.
Azrael hopes the new research can help inform better debate – and policy – concerning background checks. “It’s crazy that nobody has asked these questions since 1994,” Azrael said. “I mean, should we be citing 20-year-old statistics in support of contemporary policy? Probably not, but the problem is that there has been no effort to maintain any kind of ongoing check on what has been happening.”
Phil Cook, a prominent gun law researcher, said the new, smaller estimate did not undermine the argument that the US needs a federal law instituting universal background checks on gun sales. In fact, he said, the finding that a smaller number of guns are acquired without background checks could be an advantage for supporters of stricter gun control laws.
“The headline is that we as a nation are closer to having 100% of gun transactions with a background check than we might have thought,” says Cook, a gun violence researcher at Duke University who conducted the 1994 survey. “So, it’s more attainable, and cheaper, to pass a universal requirement than it would be if 40% of transactions were still being conducted without these screenings.”
The National Rifle Association, which has called the 40% estimate a a “lie”, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the new background check statistic.
Donald Trump, a close NRA ally who ran on a pro-gun rights platform, opposes expanding federal background check laws, arguing instead that “we need to fix the system we have”.
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