Newly elected Congresswoman Madeleine Dean has been very busy.

Last semester she returned to Penn’s campus – she attended the Fels School of Government – to participate in Wharton’s Public Policy Initiative symposium titled Defunding America’s Future – The Squeeze on Public Investment in the U.S.

Recently, she wrote editorials on universal background checks for various papers throughout the Philadelphia area. Newspapers such as the Norristown Times Herald, Pottstown Mercury, and Philadelphia Inquirer.

She presents – to paraphrase Harold Macmillan – the usual liberal mixture of sound and original ideas. Unfortunately, none of her sound ideas are original and none of her original ideas are sound.

Representative Dean, unfortunately, has made some misstatements and vilified those who do not share her beliefs about firearms regulations. The papers published her without fact checking. Therefore I would like to take the opportunity to factcheck some of the assertions she made about universal background checks, specifically, and gun control in general.

Fact-Checking Dean

Congresswoman Dean said in her Philadelphia Inquirer article, “For decades, America has struggled to talk about our gun violence problem.”



This is not true. There have been no less than 20 local, state, and federal executive actions or laws regarding firearms regulation just in the past 20 years. No other subject seems to get as much focus.

She also said that the recently enhanced background check bill passed by the House in February was the “first time in a quarter-century that Congress has acted to curb gun violence.”



Not so. The Congress passed and President Bush signed the National Instant Background Check Improvement Act in January 2008.

Dean claimed, in the op-ed she authored for the Norristown Times Herald that when opponents of universal background checks say, “Criminals do not buy guns legally” this is not true. “The evidence says otherwise” she writes.



But, according to a study of firearm violence from 1993 to 2011, published in May 2013 by President Obama’s Department of Justice, Bureau of Criminal Justice Statistics (BJS): “In 2004 (the most recent year of data available), among state prison inmates who possessed a gun at the time of the offense, fewer than two percent bought their firearm at a flea market or gun show. …37 percent obtained it from family or friends, and another 40 percent obtained it from an illegal source.

Dean’s Affirmation is Not True

Additionally, a study from a 2016 Bureau of Justice Statistics (released in January 2019) found that among those serving time for a crime during which they possessed a firearm, nearly fifty percent obtained their firearm either on the underground market (43 percent) or through theft (6 percent). Meanwhile, the study also revealed that 10 percent purchased guns from a retail source and 0.8 percent who bought them at gun shows.

Dean wrote in that same article that the current background check system was initiated in 1994 before the “…the internet opened up a huge, unregulated market for gun sales.” So it needs to be updated to protect the public, she claims.



But according to BJS, “Firearm-related homicides dropped from 18,253 homicides in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011, and nonfatal firearm crimes dropped from 1.5 million victimizations in 1993 to 467,300 in 2011.”



Was this because of the 1994 law or because of increased incarceration of violent criminals? The fact is gun homicides dropped during the early 1980’s, well before the 1994 law, subsequently increasing in the latter part of the decade.

Furthermore, a Rand informational analysis of gun policy in America, published in March 2018, stated, “…. we found little persuasive evidence for the effects of most (gun control) policies on most outcomes” Rand did note “…background checks may decrease suicide rates.”



They may decrease suicide rates. This is not dispositive. So this too is false.



Dean likes to mention in all her op-eds “….on one issue, almost everyone agrees. More than 90 percent of Americans support universal background checks for firearm purchases…”



While it is true that one poll indicates this, other polls indicate less. Besides poll numbers ebb and flow. Some polls indicate that only 11 percent of Americans favored late term abortion. But Dean supports late term abortions. So obviously she does not listen to polls when they do not agree with her.



Dean also likes to vilify her opponents declaring that they are under the control of the NRA. They NRA is allowed to petition the government just as gun control groups are allowed.



Dean’s Divisive Rhetoric

There are legitimate arguments to be made in favor of universal background checks. But Congresswoman Dean instead engages in sophistry and the vilification.



If one wants to know why the discourse in America has become so divisive, one need not look any further than Congresswoman Madeleine Dean.