Useful information from Politifact on undocumented firearms sales claims

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hso

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http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...rand-says-40-percent-guns-sold-today-escape-/

Our ruling

Gillibrand claimed that "today, about 40 percent of guns are purchased without a background check."

She, and other gun control advocates who have cited that figure, correctly repeated the findings of a well-respected study about gun ownership. There’s no question that many guns are bought and sold in America without the oversight of a background check.

But is 40 percent true "today," as Gillibrand said? Even the author of the original study says nobody knows. By mentioning the statistic as if it is current and accurate, Gillibrand revealed nothing of the fact that the figure is almost 20 years old. That’s an essential detail that people engaged in the gun debate should know.

My advice is to point out Politifact, clearly not a pro 2A organization, has recently debunked the 40% claim once again and points out the author of the original study that only contained 250 responses to their questionnaire 20 years ago says that no one knows if the number is accurate now. Gun control advocates like to cite any "faux-stitstic" that works to their advantage, but we do the same, so it is worthwhile to have this information.
 
Ok, this was worth reading if only for the phrase "Useful information from Politifact"--typically an oxymoron :)

Best way to deal with this factoid is to point out that background checks are not a universal panacea.

Should a father run a backgound check on his children before passing down his arms?

Should, oh, members of the same shooting club be required to b/gc each other?

Having introduced the question of doubt, one might then address a much more fundamental flaw--is there any evidence that a b/gc has ever prevented a crime?
 
Not disparaging the OP and intent, purpose and utility, but to me any "controls" over the private transfer of private personal property, regardless of what it is, is unconstitutional. Period. Thus the argument should be to tackle such challenges on that basis. Of course firearms are not the only items of private personal property subject to "controls", but they should all be torn down for the same reason. Commerce is constitutionally subject to regulation, that is accepted.
 
That's from the National Survey on Private Ownership and use of Firearms NSPOF. The 40% meme during the Obama Admin was 40% of crime guns from unlicensed dealers at gunshows sold without background checks through the loophole.
The NSPOF sample were non-institutionalized adults living in homes with phones in 1994; NSPOF gun acquisition questions covered 1991-1993 and the recent gun acquisition sample size was 251 people out of the whole survey group.
60% of guns in the survey were bought from dealers (including about 4% from flea markets and gun shows combined).
40% were non-dealer acquisitions:
19% were gifts (birthday, Christmas, etc.) from familiy members
5% were inheirtances
13% were used guns from private owners
3% were swaps or trades between gun owners.

The Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics DOJ NIJ BJS conducts periodic surveys of Firearms Use by Offenders, surveying 2,000+ state inmates and 2,000+ federal inmates whose last crime involved possession or use of a firearm. 2004 less than 1% of firearms using offenders got guns through gunshows, less than 12% through all legal sources combined, and you bet (a) the 88% gray and black market sources did not run background checks, and (b) would not run background checks under Bloomberg/Everytown Universal Background Checks anyway even if they were law in all states.
 
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If I was to guess where guns used in crimes came from I would guess they were originally stolen from owners who bought them legally. That is why EU countries have storage requirements and investigate after theft is reported. Ammo is only sold to those that can legally own guns. Those are some of the reasons their news broadcasts aren't filled with daily shootings or crimes in commitment of which guns are involved.
 
If I was to guess where guns used in crimes came from I would guess they were originally stolen from owners who bought them legally. That is why EU countries have storage requirements and investigate after theft is reported. Ammo is only sold to those that can legally own guns. Those are some of the reasons their news broadcasts aren't filled with daily shootings or crimes in commitment of which guns are involved.

I'm sure the fact that the population has been serfs, peasants, etc. and generally deferential to their "betters" for well over a thousand years has nothing to do with it. The terrorists in Europe seem to get all the guns and ammo they need.
 
I'm sure the fact that the population has been serfs, peasants, etc. and generally deferential to their "betters" for well over a thousand years has nothing to do with it. The terrorists in Europe seem to get all the guns and ammo they need.
The terrorists are like members of organized crime in sense they're organized and have international connections. Unless you live in a police state this will not change.
 
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Even a police state isn't going to stop terrorism. Franco's Spain and the former USSR both had ongoing problems with terrorists.
 
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Even if I believed that background checks were effective, which I don't, BCI has proven itself to be incompetent. Personally, I have had 2 experiences that show how pointless their background checks are anyway.

The first was decades ago when I went to renew my permit for the first time. I was unable to renew by mail because "My fingerprints were not on file". A couple of calls to BCI revealed that they had, supposedly, never been submitted with my original permit application... I explained that I had my old permit so... I was never satisfied with any of their canned responses. I ended up submitting new fingerprints etc.

The second was about 10 years ago. I walked into my LGS, picked out a rifle and handed my permit to the clerk. After filling out the paperwork, he called BCI, gave them my permit # and they approved the sale. A couple of hours later I got an apologetic call from that clerk. They photocopy your drivers license and permit and he noticed, while filing my paperwork, that my permit had expired more than a year earlier. Shame on me, I had moved and forgot to update my address with BCI so I never got the renewal notice. BCI approved me without a background check anyway.

It seems like we have become used to blatant incompetence, laziness or outright "Screw you" attitudes from these government agencies that literally control our ability to exercise basic constitutional rights.

If I was to guess where guns used in crimes came from I would guess they were originally stolen from owners who bought them legally. That is why EU countries have storage requirements and investigate after theft is reported. Ammo is only sold to those that can legally own guns. Those are some of the reasons their news broadcasts aren't filled with daily shootings or crimes in commitment of which guns are involved.

while this is true, the U.S. is far from the murder capital of the world. I think we are something like 90th for overall murder rate. Those murders are just committed by other means. It is the same with suicide. Japan is a perfect example. Their suicide rate is substantially higher than the U.S. with an extremely low rate of gun ownership. IMHO, bother murder rate and suicide rate have far more to do with cultural influences than gun ownership rates.
 
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If I was to guess where guns used in crimes came from I would guess they were originally stolen from owners who bought them legally. That is why EU countries have storage requirements and investigate after theft is reported. Ammo is only sold to those that can legally own guns. Those are some of the reasons their news broadcasts aren't filled with daily shootings or crimes in commitment of which guns are involved.
Well, that and the fact that these restrictions have two logical consequences that moot the issue;
1) Arms and ammo are priced above what the lower classes can afford, or they are barred from ownership by discrimination, despite being the most at risk of violent crime that would warrant a defense firearm (or from a rural angle, the most likely to rely upon game for food, since I assume lawful subsistence hunting has been impossible in Europe for centuries due to cost/access/overhunting)
2) Oppressive enforcement regimes and short-sighted social policy have led to highly insular communities where poverty & crime are highest. Black market goods like firearms & other contraband flow largely unrestricted under the noses of the nicer segments of society, and the related criminal activities are badly under-reported. The continued flow of illegal weapons through Malmo despite so many attacks' weaponry being traced back to their & subsequent crackdowns is a rather obvious example. Instead of 'daily shootings' you have frighteningly common grenade attacks. And I'm sure there are as many if not more places in Europe that police don't even bother responding to "shots fired" reports, assuming they even get made in the first place.

There's also a cultural difference; from what I understand, practically all European nations have far more centralized criminal organizations governing the underworld compared to the multitude of independent street-level gangs that typically dominate US hell-holes. That less chaotic arrangement leads to slightly less random/widespread carnage, since bad actors (from the mafia's perspective) are dealt with 'internally' outside the justice system. In US cities, these rabid dogs instead flit in and out of jail/prison a dozen times before being killed at age 30 by the next generation of thugs. It's also easier for these truly wild/lawless persons to simply leave 'civilized' areas to those under less scrutiny than in the US (where the logisitics of traveling across let alone outside the country puts it out of the reach of many)

TCB
 
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Some time back, when I moved to VA (from PA) and tried to buy a gun, an Arlington County police sergeant (no less) came to see me to check me out. He confided that his orders were to make sure I was not black, since they wanted to make sure that "n***ers" didn't get guns. Then he subjected me to one of the most vicious racist rants I have ever heard from anyone, even members of racist groups. That was an eye-opener on the REAL purpose of gun control laws.

Jim
 
A lot of people apparently think it's purely a coincidence that the vast majority of gun control in the South was enacted in the decade or so after the civil war ended. All those tough anti-gun laws on the books--they just weren't enforced uniformly...
 
Some time back, when I moved to VA (from PA) and tried to buy a gun, an Arlington County police sergeant (no less) came to see me to check me out. He confided that his orders were to make sure I was not black, since they wanted to make sure that "n***ers" didn't get guns. Then he subjected me to one of the most vicious racist rants I have ever heard from anyone, even members of racist groups. That was an eye-opener on the REAL purpose of gun control laws.

Jim

Whoa!
 
If I was to guess where guns used in crimes came from I would guess they were originally stolen from owners who bought them legally. That is why EU countries have storage requirements and investigate after theft is reported. Ammo is only sold to those that can legally own guns. Those are some of the reasons their news broadcasts aren't filled with daily shootings or crimes in commitment of which guns are involved.

Thankfully, your guess is not relevant. Violent crime has been decreasing in the U.S. for decades while gun ownership has increased over the same time period. A recent study even found that mass murder has not increased in the U.S. in the past decade. Furthermore, we have a second amendment in the U.S.

The reason news broadcasts are "filled with daily shootings" is because of the media adage, "If it bleeds, it leads." A crime that didn't happen because a victim was armed is less exciting than a drive-by shooting. Obama (who is very much anti-gun) commissioned the CDC (also anti-gun in the past) to study how often guns are used in crime and in defense, and to his surprise the results showed that guns are used 16-100 times more frequently in defense than in crime.
 
Some time back, when I moved to VA (from PA) and tried to buy a gun, an Arlington County police sergeant (no less) came to see me to check me out. He confided that his orders were to make sure I was not black, since they wanted to make sure that "n***ers" didn't get guns. Then he subjected me to one of the most vicious racist rants I have ever heard from anyone, even members of racist groups. That was an eye-opener on the REAL purpose of gun control laws.

Jim

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I wish more people were aware of the racist roots of gun control in this country, as well as the party that pushed it and continues to push it. Democrats recently lost the longest-serving senator in U.S. history, Robert Byrd, who was a leader in the KKK and was professed by Hillary Clinton to be her political mentor.
 
Obama (who is very much anti-gun) commissioned the CDC (also anti-gun in the past) to study how often guns are used in crime and in defense,
Actually, 44 used an EA to direct CDC to "perform more research" on guns and crime.
About 2005 or so, CDC actually ased that no more such requests be made of them, as they had almost two decades of peer-reviewed research showing that the premises were wrong, which obviated the point of the research (you can commission any number of studies you want to on why the sun does not rise in the west, but that research will run afoul of the fact that East is, in fact, defined as the direction of the dawn). Apparently, no one at CDC was willing to rise to the bait of "we'll give you grant money if you prove what we want to hear." At least, not against more than a decade of research to the contrary.
 
I bought most of my guns in the '90s from "kitchen table" FFLs in the at gun shows and at kitchen tables. My postman was my go to FFL. I suspect there were a lot less sales without 4473s when there were more small FFLs. Unintended consequences.

Mike
 
Folks,

Please stay focused on this topic and follow the Activism Forum rules. Remember we're supposed to work up solutions instead of wandering off into rants.
 
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