{"id":67115,"date":"2016-07-28T08:00:44","date_gmt":"2016-07-28T12:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=67115"},"modified":"2016-07-27T18:18:31","modified_gmt":"2016-07-27T22:18:31","slug":"shocker-legal-gun-owners-dont-commit-gun-related-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=67115","title":{"rendered":"Shocker; legal gun owners don’t commit gun-related crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"

University of Pittsburgh researchers partnered with Pittsburgh police to track guns used in their community to commit crimes and they discovered that more than 80% of legal gun owners just don’t commit gun-related crimes, according to the Washington Post<\/a>;<\/p>\n

They found that in approximately 8 out of 10 cases, the perpetrator was not a lawful gun owner but rather in illegal possession of a weapon that belonged to someone else. The researchers were primarily interested in how these guns made their way from a legal purchase \u2014 at a firearm dealer or via a private sale \u2014 to the scene of the crime.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

The top-line finding of the study \u2014 that the overwhelming majority of gun crimes aren’t committed by lawful gun owners \u2014 reinforces a common refrain among gun rights advocacy groups. They argue that since criminals don’t follow laws, new regulations on gun ownership would only serve to burden lawful owners while doing little to combat crime.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course they don’t discuss the number of guns that went into the hands of criminals through private sales or gun shows. But the FBI interviewed criminals a few years back and determined that about 1% of crimes were committed with guns that came from those sources. In this study, the researchers examined 893 firearms that police recovered from crime scenes in the year 2008.<\/p>\n

The study does paint gun owners as an irresponsible bunch – apparently we’re sloppy with storage of our firearms making it easy to steal from us. We’re also sloppy in reporting the loss to law enforcement. So that’s where the Washington Post sees it’s opportunity to regulate gun owners based on this research.<\/p>\n

But Fabio’s research suggests that this strict dichotomy between “good guys” and “bad guys” isn’t necessarily helpful for figuring out how to keep “good” guns \u2014 those purchased legally \u2014 from getting into “bad” hands. And there may be modest, non-burdensome ways to help keep guns in the hands of the good guys.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For example, they like DC’s law that requires gun owners to report lost or stolen weapons within ten days – for whatever good that would do. The police find it difficult to find stolen cars, let alone handguns.<\/p>\n

A 2000 report from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms found that in 1998, more than 85 percent of gun dealers had no guns used in crimes trace back to them. By contrast, 1 percent of dealers accounted for nearly 6 in 10 crime gun traces that year.<\/p>\n

The firearms bureau knows exactly who these gun dealers are \u2014 but they’re not allowed to share that information with policymakers or researchers due to a law passed by Congress in 2003. As a result, solutions for stanching the flow of guns from these dealers to crime scenes remain frustratingly out of reach for public-health researchers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, the Post wants to be able to track guns – Congress should mandate a federal database of guns sales. Another useless boondoggle that will do nothing to prevent crime. Like the guy in the TV commercials that “monitors” bank robberies but doesn’t stop bank robberies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

University of Pittsburgh researchers partnered with Pittsburgh police to track guns used in their community to … Shocker; legal gun owners don’t commit gun-related crimes<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}