The Gun Debate
President Donald Trump and some members of Congress met Feb. 28 at the White House for a freewheeling discussion on how to reduce gun violence at schools. The meeting came two weeks after the mass shooting in Florida in which 17 people were killed, including 14 high school students.
Here we look at the facts regarding some of the issues that were raised during that meeting.
Do universal background checks reduce firearm deaths?
Sen. Christopher Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, urged Trump to support federal legislation that would expand background checks of prospective gun buyers.
Currently, federal law requires background checks on those who buy guns from federally licensed firearm dealers. Murphy and the Democrats want to expand background checks to cover private sales by unlicensed individuals, including some of the sales that take place at gun shows and over the internet.
Murphy cited states that require universal background checks as evidence that such a federal law would reduce gun deaths.
Murphy: In states that have universal background checks, there are 35 percent less gun murders than in states that don’t have them.
That’s true, but it doesn’t mean that universal background check laws have caused lower mortality rates. A causal relationship between such state laws and firearm deaths hasn’t been established by researchers.
In fact, Murphy is citing an average firearm mortality rate for states with universal background checks. But the states’ individual rates vary. Some of them have higher firearm mortality rates than states that don’t have universal background checks.
There are eight states and the District of Columbia that have laws in effect that require “universal background checks at the point of sale for all sales and transfers of all classes of firearms, whether they are purchased from a licensed dealer or an unlicensed seller,” according to the Giffords. The average firearm mortality rate in those nine jurisdictions was 9 per 100,000 residents in 2016, . That’s 35 percent less than the states that don’t require universal background checks, as Murphy said.
