The Line: 40 percent of guns are purchased without a background check.

The Party: Democratic gun-control advocates

Editor’s note: This is one of an occasional series called “Party Lines” that will highlight misleading talking points by both parties.

After the December mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., several Democrats advocating for stricter gun-control laws — including a law requiring universal background checks for gun purchases — took to using this talking point to support their case. In a Jan. 16 speech on gun violence, President Barack Obama, for example, claimed that “as many as 40 percent of all gun purchases are conducted without a background check.” The president’s gun-control plan, “Now Is The Time,” also says that “studies estimate that nearly 40 percent of all gun sales are made by private sellers who are exempt from this requirement.”

But that figure is based on an analysis of a nearly two-decade-old survey of less than 300 people that essentially asked participants whether they thought the guns they had acquired — and not necessarily purchased — came from a federally licensed dealer. And one of the authors of the report often cited as a source for the claim — Philip Cook of Duke University — told our friends at Politifact.com that he has “no idea” whether the “very old number” applies today or not. Even Vice President Joe Biden acknowledged that the statistic may not be accurate in a speech at a mayoral conference on Jan. 17. Biden prefaced his claim that “about 40 percent of the people who buy guns today do so outside the … background check system” by saying that “because of the lack of the ability of federal agencies to be able to even keep records, we can’t say with absolute certainty what I’m about to say is correct.”

The basis for the claim is a 1997 report from professors Cook and Jens Ludwig for the National Institute of Justice. The authors concluded that “approximately 60 percent of gun acquisitions involved [federally licensed firearms dealers] and hence were subject to Federal regulations on such matters as out-of-State sales, criminal history checks, and record keeping.” They similarly concluded in a more detailed report published earlier that year that “approximately 60 to 70 percent of gun acquisitions occur in the primary market” from a licensed dealer.

Both of those statements were based on a single 1994 telephone survey on private gun ownership conducted by the Police Foundation and funded by the Justice Department. The survey asked the 251 participants who had acquired guns in the previous two years, “Was the person you acquired this gun from a licensed firearm dealer?” The answer choices were “yes,” “probably was/think so,” “probably not,” “no/definitely not,” “don’t know” and refuse to report. Cook and Ludwig found that 64.3 percent of those surveyed (Table 3.14) said that they had purchased or traded for a gun that came from a licensed dealer or “probably” did. The 40 percent figure comes from assuming that the remaining 35.7 percent — which has been rounded up — did not.

But with the exception of Biden, hardly anyone using the figure ever cautions that it may not be accurate, or, at the very least, that it was based on a survey of just a few hundred people in 1994, in which participants may have guessed whether they had acquired a gun that came from a licensed dealer. Instead, the number is quite often stated as fact when no one can say for certain.

— D’Angelo Gore

Below is a list of some Democrats who have used the 40 percent figure: