Things that make you go hmmmmmmm.......
40% loophole fallacy
“The law already requires licensed gun dealers to run background checks, and over the last 14 years that’s kept 1.5 million of the wrong people from getting their hands on a gun. But it’s hard to enforce that law when as many as 40 percent of all gun purchases are conducted without a background check.”
--President Obama, remarks on gun violence, Jan. 16, 2013
“Studies estimate that nearly 40 percent of all gun sales are made by private sellers who are exempt from this requirement.”
--“Now Is the Time: The president’s plan to protect our children and our communities by reducing gun violence,” released Jan. 16
“That’s why we need, and I’ve recommended to the president, universal background checks. Studies show that up to 40 percent of the people -- and there’s no -- let me be honest with you again, which I’ll get to in a moment. Because of the lack of the ability of federal agencies to be able to even keep records, we can’t say with absolute certainty what I’m about to say is correct. But the consensus is about 40 percent of the people who buy guns today do so outside the NICS [National Instant Criminal Background Check] system, outside the background check system.”
--Vice President Biden, remarks to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Jan. 17
Regular readers of this column know that we are often suspicious when politicians inject the phrase “up to” before citing a statistic. That’s because it often suggests the politician is picking the upper value in a range of possibilities.
A reader expressed deep skepticism of this 40-percent figure when Obama used it. We were further struck by Biden’s admission he could not say with “absolute certainty” that it was correct. So let’s investigate.
The Facts
The White House says the figure comes from a 1997 Institute of Justice report, written by Philip Cook of Duke University and Jens Ludwig of the University of Chicago. This study is based on data collected from a survey in 1994, just the Brady law requirements for background checks was coming into effect. (In fact, the questions concerned purchases in 1993 and 1994, while Brady law went into effect in early 1994.) In other words, this is a really old figure.
The data is available for researchers to explore at the Interuniversity consortium on political and social research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan. Digging deeper, we find that the survey sample was just 251 people. (The survey was done by telephone, using a random-digit-dial method, with a response rate of 50 percent.) With this sample size, the 95 percent confidence interval will be plus or minus 6 percentage points.
Moreover, when asked if he or she bought from a licensed firearms dealer, the possible answers included “probably was/think so” and “probably not,” leaving open the possibility the purchaser was mistaken. (The “probably not” answers were counted as “no.”)
When all of the “yes” and “probably was” answers were added together, that left 35.7 percent of respondents indicating they did not receive the gun from a licensed firearms dealer. Rounding up gets you to 40 percent, though as we noted the survey sample is so small it could also be rounded down to 30 percent.
Moreover, when gifts, inheritances and prizes are added in, then the number shrinks to 26.4 percent. (The survey showed that nearly 23.8 percent of the people surveyed obtained their gun either as a gift or inherited it, and about half of them believed a licensed firearms dealer was the source.)
Cook and Ludwig, in a lengthier 1996 study of the data for the Police Foundation, acknowledge the ambiguity in the answers, but gave their best estimate as a range of 30 to 40 percent for transactions in the “off-the-books” secondary market. (The shorter 1997 study cited by the White House does not give a range, but instead says “approximately 60 percent of gun acquisitions” involved a licensed dealer.)
Interestingly, while people often speak of the “gun show loophole,” the data in this 1994 survey shows that only 3.9 percent of firearm purchases were made at gun shows.
Ludwig acknowledged that “our estimate is clearly not perfect.” He said that a larger sample size would have provided a more precise estimate of off-the-books transactions, but he and Cook were not involved in the design stage of the survey. He added that one reason why the data is so old is because the federal government has generally stopped funding such research.
“While there is no perfect estimate in social science, we’d have a better estimate for this proportion had the federal government not decided to get out of the business of supporting research on guns and gun violence several years ago,” he said.
Ludwig and Cook were among the social scientists who signed a letter to Biden earlier this month calling on ending barriers to firearms research. The letter includes an interesting figure, comparing how many National Institute of Health awards have been given for firearms research versus infectious diseases.
I also pointed out the case where China had more guns per capita yet 4 other of the top 10 most populous countries (not top 10 with the highest rates of violent crime) in the world had multiples of intentional homicide rates. Good god you are clueless.
proportions.
Kind of depicts one aspect of what needs to be done. Also beats being paranoid, dumb, and/or a combination of both, which represents the other side of the equation.![[icon]](/data/avatars/m/5/5167.jpg?1660313464){kind=avatar}
