DOJ report shows just how few legally purchased guns are used to commit crimes

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A Department of Justice report shows that only seven percent of nearly 300,000 state and federal prisoners who possessed a firearm during their crime purchased the gun from a licensed firearm dealer.

The report estimates that 287,400 prisoners had a gun on them when they committed the crime for which they are imprisoned, and a majority of those prisoners either stole the gun, found it at the scene of the crime, or bought it off the street or from the underground market, according to the 2016 Survey of Prison Inmates.

About 13 percent of state and federal prisoners surveyed used a gun during their crime, and of those prisoners, only 1.3 percent obtained it from a retail source.

The survey also revealed that only 0.8 percent of prisoners who possessed a gun during their offense got the firearm from a gun show, a statistic which shows that “gun show loopholes” often decried by gun control advocates are not contributing significantly to crime.

“[The survey has] consistently show that there is no such thing as criminals exploiting a ‘gun show loophole’ to arm themselves for their crimes,” said Lawrence G. Keane, senior vice president of government and public affairs for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, according to Guns.com. “Perhaps lawmakers should spend less time on these ‘solutions in search of a problem’ and more time on fixing the background check system, or on any of the issues that voters actually rank as a priority.” – READ MORE

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