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"Universal background checks stop criminals"

The Narrative

"Close the loopholes. Require a background check on every gun sale, and criminals won't be able to get guns."

Verdict: Mostly not supported. The Justice Department's own survey of prisoners found that 9 in 10 of those who had a gun during their crime did not get it from a store, pawn shop, flea market or gun show. Most got it on the street, from family or friends, by theft, or at the crime scene. When the existing check does catch a prohibited buyer who lied on the federal form, the federal government almost never prosecutes. And California's universal-check law, the best-studied test case, showed no measurable effect on gun homicide.

The record: where armed criminals got their guns

The Bureau of Justice Statistics interviewed a national sample of state and federal prisoners in 2016. About 287,400 prisoners said they had a gun during the crime they were serving time for. Among those who said where it came from:1

Source of the firearm Share
Off the street / underground market 43.2%
From family or friends (bought, borrowed, gift, or bought for them) 25.3%
Other (found at the crime scene, brought by someone else, etc.) 17.4%
Retail source, total 10.1%
... gun shop or store 7.5%
... pawn shop 1.6%
... gun show 0.8%
... flea market 0.4%
Theft 6.4%

Prisoners could name more than one source, so shares add to more than 100%.

Key points:

  • 89.9% did not buy or trade for the gun at any retail source. BJS: "Among prisoners who possessed a gun during their offense, 90% did not obtain it from a retail source."1
  • Only 0.8% got it at a gun show, the setting the "loophole" debate usually focuses on.1
  • About 7% bought it under their own name from a licensed dealer, the channel that already requires a federal check. Of all prisoners in the survey, fewer than 2% had a gun from a retail source during their crime.1

The record: denied buyers are rarely prosecuted

Lying on the federal form (ATF Form 4473) to buy a gun is a federal crime. In fiscal year 2017, the Government Accountability Office found:2

Step FY 2017
Federal NICS background checks 8,606,286
Denied transactions 112,090
Referred by ATF to field offices for investigation 12,710
Prosecuted by U.S. Attorneys (as of June 2018) 12

That is about 1 prosecution for every 9,300 denials. (Our arithmetic from GAO's table.) GAO also found that officials from 10 of the 13 states it studied that run their own checks "do not investigate or prosecute NICS denials."2

The record: California's universal checks

California has required a background check on nearly all gun sales, including private sales, since 1991. It also barred people convicted of certain violent misdemeanors from owning guns. Researchers from UC Davis and Johns Hopkins compared California with 32 other states over 1981–2000. They found:3

"The simultaneous implementation of CBC and MVP policies was not associated with a net change in the firearm homicide rate over the ensuing 10 years in California."

The authors themselves suggested reasons: "incomplete and missing records for background checks, incomplete compliance and enforcement, and narrowly constructed prohibitions."3

What's left out, on both sides

To be fair to supporters of universal checks:

  • Some guns flow through private sales. A quarter of armed prisoners got their gun from family or friends.1 Some of those transfers could, in principle, have been subject to a check. Many "off the street" guns also started out in a legal sale before being trafficked or stolen.
  • The research isn't all one way. The same California study notes that stricter permit-to-purchase laws, which require a police-issued permit before any sale, have shown benefits in some studies.3 Other researchers argue that universal checks make gun trafficking harder over time. That evidence is disputed, and the best-studied universal-check law did not show a homicide effect.
  • Prisoner surveys are self-reported. Inmates may shade the truth about where they got a gun. Still, the 2016 survey had a 70% response rate and is the government's own best source on the question.1

What gets left out of the campaign ads is simpler. A check only works on a sale that goes through a check. Street dealers, thieves and straw buyers don't line up for one. And when the system does catch a lying felon, the law is almost never enforced.

Bottom line

Criminals mostly get guns where no background check will ever reach: the street, the burglary, the friend or relative. Expanding checks to every private sale between law-abiding neighbors puts the burden on the people least likely to commit crimes. If the goal is keeping guns from criminals, start by prosecuting the prohibited people the current system already catches, and go after theft and trafficking.

  1. Mariel Alper and Lauren Glaze, Source and Use of Firearms Involved in Crimes: Survey of Prison Inmates, 2016, Bureau of Justice Statistics Special Report, U.S. Department of Justice, January 2019 (NCJ 251776), highlights and Tables 5–7: https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/suficspi16.pdf ↩↩↩↩↩↩

  2. U.S. Government Accountability Office, Law Enforcement: Few Individuals Denied Firearms Purchases Are Prosecuted and ATF Should Assess Use of Warning Notices in Lieu of Prosecutions, GAO-18-440, Sept. 5, 2018: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-18-440 (full report: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-18-440.pdf) ↩↩

  3. Alvaro Castillo-Carniglia, Rose M. C. Kagawa, Magdalena Cerdá, et al., "California's comprehensive background check and misdemeanor violence prohibition policies and firearm mortality," Annals of Epidemiology, published online Oct. 11, 2018, doi:10.1016/j.annepidem.2018.10.001: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30744830/ ↩↩↩