Fact: Only 0.7% of convicts bought their firearms at gun shows. 39.2% obtained them from illegal street dealers.1
Fact: Less than 1% of “crime guns” were obtained at gun shows2. This is a reduction from a 1997 study that found 1.7% - 2% of guns used in criminal offenses were purchased at gun shows.3
Fact: The FBI concluded in one study that no firearms acquired at gun shows were used to kill cops. “In contrast to media myth, none of the firearms in the study were obtained from gun shows.”4
Fact: Only 5% of metropolitan police departments believe gun shows are a problem.5
Fact: Only 3.5% of youthful offenders reported that they obtained their last handgun at a gun show.6
Fact: 93% of guns used in crimes are obtained illegally (i.e., not at gun stores or gun shows).7
Fact: At most, 14% of all firearms traced in investigations were purchased at gun shows.8 But this includes all firearms that the police traced, regardless of if they were used in crimes or not, which overstates the acquisition rate.
Fact: Gun dealers are federally licensed. They are bound to stringent rules for sales that apply equally whether they are dealing from a storefront or a gun show.9
Fact: Most crime guns are either bought off the street from illegal sources (39.2%) or through family members or friends (39.6%).10
This is an excerpt from “Gun Facts” by Guy Smith, available free from http://www.gunfacts.info
- Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Firearm Use by Offenders”, February 2002 ↩
- Ibid ↩
- National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice. According to an NIJ study
released in December 1997 “Homicide in Eight U.S. Cities” ↩ - U.S. Department of Justice, “Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on Our Nation’s Law Enforcement Officers”, August 2006 ↩
- Center to Prevent Handgun Violence survey of 37 police departments in large cities, reported in a CPHV report
titled “On the Front Line: Making Gun Interdiction Work”, February 1998 ↩ - Timothy S. Bynum, Todd G. Beitzel, Tracy A. O’Connell & Sean P. Varano, “Patterns in Gun Acquisition and Use by Youthful Offenders in Michigan”, 1999 ↩
- BATF, 1999 ↩
- BATF, June 2000, covers only July 1996 through December 1998 ↩
- BATF, 2000 ↩
- “Firearm use by Offenders”, Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2001 ↩
0 Comments on “Myth: Gun shows are supermarkets for criminals”
Leave a Comment