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Gun Study Blows Gaping Hole in Gun Grabbers' Anti-Gun Show & Pro-Registration Narratives

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The anti-Second Amendment crowd has made no secret about their intentions to whittle away at and ultimately do away with legal gun ownership through the implementation of increasingly strict gun control laws.

Many of the gun control proposals offered up by the left make it more difficult for law-abiding citizens to purchase and possess various firearms, often by mandating “universal background checks,” imposing strict limits on the purchase of guns and ammunition and by closing the alleged “gun show loophole.”

None of those proposals or other gun control restrictions would do much, if anything, to stop or even reduce violent gun crime — the majority of which is committed by criminals who have no regard for the laws and don’t obtain their firearms through the same normal means as law-abiding citizens.

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Fox News reported on a recent study released by the Department of Justice that dug into data compiled from an extensive survey of prison inmates. That study found that roughly 20 percent of all inmates, or about 287,400 prisoners total, were incarcerated for crimes in which they used a firearm.

The study, titled “Source and Use of Firearms Involved in Crimes,” was derived from the data obtained in a 2016 survey of inmates.

What that survey found is that the anti-gun crowd is looking in the least efficient place to stop gun crime with their gun control laws — licensed retail sales and gun shows. Only a tiny percentage of gun-toting criminals obtained their illicit firearms through those legal means.

Instead, about 43 percent of firearms used in crimes were purchased on the street or black market, with about 6 percent of those firearms being obtained through some sort of theft. Another 17 percent were found at a separate crime scene or as the result of a straw purchase, where somebody else purchased it legally on their behalf.

Does this study confirm what you already suspected about gun crime?

Similarly, about 25 percent of guns used by criminals were borrowed, gifted or traded to them by a friend or family member.

In the end, only about 10 percent of firearms used by criminals were obtained from a legal retail source — about 7.5 percent from licensed gun dealers, 1.6 percent from pawn shops, 0.4 percent from flea markets and 0.8 percent from gun shows.

In reality, fewer than that 10 percent of legally purchased crime guns would be impacted by the anti-gun crowd’s gun control schemes that seek to close the imaginary “gun show loophole” or add more flaming hoops to jump through in the legal purchasing process, as the vast majority of guns obtained by criminals are garnered through other, often already illegal means.

In other words, about 90 percent of the firearms used by criminals would still be available to them through those other means, meaning most criminals will still be easily able to get a gun. Meanwhile, law-abiding citizens will be faced with increasingly strict rules and regulations that make it even tougher for them to legally purchase firearms.

Separately, the DOJ study also severely undercut the anti-gun crowd’s obsession with banning so-called “assault weapons” like semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, as the survey revealed that such firearms are rarely used to commit crimes.

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Of the roughly 20 percent of all crimes committed with a firearm, more than 18 percent of those crimes were committed with a handgun. Only about 1.5 percent of all crimes committed involved the use of a rifle, and only about 1.6 percent of all crimes committed involved the use of a shotgun, whether of the “assault weapon” semi-automatic versions or the pump-action version.

Thus, we see from this survey just how pointless and unproductive gun control laws targeting licensed dealers and gun shows are at preventing criminals from getting their hands on a firearm.

Furthermore, we also see just how worthless proposed “assault weapons bans” are at reducing gun crime, given how little crime is committed using such weapons already.

Gun control laws don’t work. They don’t reduce crime. The real purpose of discouraging and limiting legal gun ownership is to undermine the Second Amendment of the Constitution and therefore must be resisted.

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Ben Marquis is a writer who identifies as a constitutional conservative/libertarian. He has written about current events and politics for The Western Journal since 2014. His focus is on protecting the First and Second Amendments.
Ben Marquis has written on current events and politics for The Western Journal since 2014. He reads voraciously and writes about the news of the day from a conservative-libertarian perspective. He is an advocate for a more constitutional government and a staunch defender of the Second Amendment, which protects the rest of our natural rights. He lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, with the love of his life as well as four dogs and four cats.
Birthplace
Louisiana
Nationality
American
Education
The School of Life
Location
Little Rock, Arkansas
Languages Spoken
English
Topics of Expertise
Politics




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