The Gun Show "Loophole"

The Gun Show "Loophole"

Most gun owners know that there is no loophole. Federal law does not currently prohibit two private parties transferring a firearm. Some states have laws about this, but the federal government does not. There is no more a gun show "loophole" than there is a newspaper advertisement "loophole" because newspapers accept ads for guns for sale.

Nonetheless, I have long been concerned about gun shows. The vast majority of the people that I have met at gun shows seemed like perfectly decent people--but I've met a few attendees who I found myself wondering, "Would you pass a background check?" And a lot of people who really ought to know better don't seem to ask any questions. After California prohibited private party transfers in 1991, I was at a gun show in Marin County, and someone there tried to sell me a Remington Model 11 semiauto shotgun. I explained that this wasn't a legal transaction--and his response was basically, it didn't matter, he was a Marin County Deputy Sheriff.

Anyway, is there a real problem with gun shows? There's a new study that you can read about here, that concludes: No. They examined homicide and suicide statistics for the years 1994-2004 for California and Texas--the two extremes on gun show regulation. They looked specifically at what happened to homicide and suicide rates in surrounding zipcodes in the week after gun shows. They found a statistically significant increase in gun suicides--but it was very small--perhaps four more gun suicides per year in the entire state of California. And they found that this was balanced out by an equivalent drop in non-gun suicides. Only the method seems to have been affected--not the result. They found no effect on homicide rates in California. I confess: even I was a bit surprised by that.

In Texas, which has effectively no regulation of gun shows, the results were counterintuitive. Gun homicide rates actually fell in the surrounding zipcodes in the week after gun shows. Again, the difference was really, really tiny, but measureable. There was no effect on suicide rates.

Surprised? I am. It would appear that gun shows, whatever objection gun control activists might have, are simply not a public safety issue--whether the state regulates them tightly or loosely.

Most amazingly, one of the authors of the study, Mark Duggan, has a history of publishing work that is pretty clearly not pro-gun, such as his paper, "More Guns, More Crime."