(Press-News.org) (SACRAMENTO, Calif.) —A scientific survey of more than 1,600 gun retailers in the U.S. has found that gun buyers frequently try to make illegal purchases and that gun retailers take a dim view of fellow sellers who engage in illegal activity — regardless of whether they are actively breaking the law or simply looking the other way.
The survey, conducted in 2011 by Garen Wintemute, professor of emergency medicine and director of the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program, is believed to be the first scientific study of a large group of gun retailers to determine their attitudes on illegal gun sales — such as "straw" or surrogate purchases, and undocumented purchases — and other criminal activity among buyers and retailers.
The research appears online March 11 in the journal Injury Prevention and is a follow up to initial results Wintemute published in September 2012 in the Journal of Urban Health on the characteristics of federally licensed firearms dealers, pawnbrokers and their establishments.
"There is a continuing debate on the commerce of firearms: which ones should be sold and who they should be sold to. But no one has ever gotten the opinions of the people doing the selling," Wintemute said. "We wanted to collect detailed information about firearm retailers and get their sense of how often illegal activity occurs and what should be done about the problem."
Wintemute surveyed 1,601 of 9,720 dealers, pawnbrokers and gunsmiths, selecting participants who sold 50 or more firearms each year. The survey asked retailers how often they thought customers were trying to make straw purchases, or buying a gun for someone who is ineligible to own one. The survey also asked how often customers tried to purchase a gun without filling out appropriate forms or receiving a background check. Participants also were asked how often they had refused to make a sale or alerted other retailers about an attempted illegal purchase.
The survey showed that 67.3 percent had experienced an attempted straw purchase in the previous year, while 42.4 percent had experienced an attempted undocumented purchase. In all, participants reported 2,051 attempted straw purchases and 2,254 attempted undocumented purchases. Pawnbrokers reported greater numbers of both. The survey also found that theft was a common occurrence; more than 25 percent of respondents reported that they had experienced theft in the previous five years.
Extrapolating from this data, Wintemute estimates that the 9,720 retailers who were eligible for the study experienced nearly 34,000 attempted straw purchases and 37,000 attempted undocumented purchases.
Generally, participants refused to complete illegal sales but only notified law enforcement or alerted other retailers 75 percent of the time. However, when asked about sentencing, retailers often specified long sentences, for both customers and retailers.
For a retailer who sold 50 weapons to traffickers, the median recommended sentence was 10 years; the median fine was $50,000. The retailers indicated they would impose the same sentences on buyers.
"The sentences they recommended were often harsher than current law," Wintemute said. "Many felt bad retailers should face stiffer sentences than customers. Also, the survey gave participants the opportunity to let their peers off the hook: if they were in a tough community or afraid for their safety. But the retailers did not do that. They laid responsibility directly on the person who committed the crime."
In addition, 59.5 percent of respondents believed that retailers who often have firearms used in a crime traced back to their store are not asking enough questions and probably know these sales are illegal.
"Even after factoring in their sales volume, a small number of retailers sold a disproportionate share of the traced guns," Wintemute said. He also suggests this minority could be a prime focus for law enforcement.
At present, there are three bills before Congress that would clarify and strengthen laws to prevent straw purchases and other illegal sales activity. Wintemute believes retailers could help Congress and other legislative bodies devise equitable gun laws.
"I think gun retailers are a vastly underused resource," Wintemute said. "The majority do not want bad apples in their industry. We should look for ways to collaborate with them to identify and prosecute bad guys in their industry."
INFORMATION:
The research was funded by grants from The California Wellness Foundation and the Joyce Foundation.
UC Davis Health System is improving lives and transforming health care by providing excellent patient care, conducting groundbreaking research, fostering innovative, interprofessional education, and creating dynamic, productive partnerships with the community. The academic health system includes one of the country's best medical schools, a 619-bed acute-care teaching hospital, a 1000-member physician's practice group and the new Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing. It is home to a National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center, an international neurodevelopmental institute, a stem cell institute and a comprehensive children's hospital. Other nationally prominent centers focus on advancing telemedicine, improving vascular care, eliminating health disparities and translating research findings into new treatments for patients. Together, they make UC Davis a hub of innovation that is transforming health for all. For more information, visit healthsystem.ucdavis.edu.
END
Researchers of five European universities have developed a cloud-computing platform for robots. The platform allows robots connected to the Internet to directly access the powerful computational, storage, and communications infrastructure of modern data centers - the giant server farms behind the likes of Google, Facebook, and Amazon - for robotics tasks and robot learning.
With the development of the RoboEarth Cloud Engine the team continues their work towards creating an Internet for robots. The new platform extends earlier work on allowing robots to share knowledge ...
For years, researchers have developed thin films of bismuth telluride (Bi2Te3) – which converts heat into electricity or electricity to cooling – on top of gallium arsenide (GaAs) to create cooling devices for electronics. But while they knew it could be done, it was not clear how – because the atomic structures of those unlikely pair of materials do not appear to be compatible. Now researchers from North Carolina State University and RTI International have solved the mystery, opening the door to new research in the field.
"We've used state-of-the-art technology to solve ...
Vegetation growth at Earth's northern latitudes increasingly resembles lusher latitudes to the south, according to a NASA-funded study based on a 30-year record of land surface and newly improved satellite data sets.
An international team of university and NASA scientists examined the relationship between changes in surface temperature and vegetation growth from 45 degrees north latitude to the Arctic Ocean. Results show temperature and vegetation growth at northern latitudes now resemble those found 4 degrees to 6 degrees of latitude farther south as recently as 1982.
"Higher ...
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators have described what may be a newly identified disease that appears to explain some cases of widespread chronic pain and other symptoms in children and young adults. Their report that will appear in the April issue of the journal Pediatrics, and has received early online release, finds that most of a group of young patients seen at the MGH for chronic, unexplained pain had test results indicating small-fiber polyneuropathy, a condition not previously reported in children. The MGH investigators call this new syndrome juvenile-onset ...
In recent years, a body of publications in the microbiology field has challenged all previous knowledge of how antibiotics kill bacteria. "A slew of papers came out studying this phenomenon, suggesting that there is a general mechanism of killing by antibiotics," said Kim Lewis, Northeastern University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biology and director of Northeastern's Antimicrobial Discovery Center.
The standard thinking at the time was that the three main classes of bactericidal antibiotics each had a unique way of killing ...
The current international climate policy framework is mainly based on the national and regional level of macroscopic carbon emissions data, such as the regional per capita carbon emissions are often used as the indicator to measure the fairness of carbon emission rights. However, the per capita emissions based on regional macro data can not accurately reveal the low carbon emissions of the poor within the region, and cover up the emission differences among people intra-country and intra-region, the household carbon emission data based on field surveys could compensate for ...
In a long-term study, Prof. Dr. Jürgen Margraf, Alexander von Humboldt Professor for Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy at the RUB, investigated the psychological effects of plastic surgery on approximately 550 patients in cooperation with colleagues from the University of Basel. Patients demonstrated more enjoyment of life, satisfaction and self-esteem after their physical appearance had been surgically altered. The results of the world's largest ever study on this issue are reported by the researchers in the journal "Clinical Psychological Science".
The aim of the ...
Extensive shell fishing and sewerage discharge in river estuaries could have serious consequences for the rare Icelandic black-tailed godwits that feed there. But it is the males that are more likely to suffer, according to new research from the University of East Anglia.
Research published today in the journal Ecology and Evolution reveals very different winter feeding habits between the sexes.
Both males and females mainly consume bivalve molluscs, sea snails and marine worms, probing vigorously into soft estuary mud with their long beaks. But the study shows that ...
Drinking just two cups of coffee a day is associated with the risk of low birth weight. Researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, have conducted a study on 59,000 women in collaboration with the Norwegian Institute of Public Health.
Expectant mothers who consume caffeine, usually by drinking coffee, are more likely to have babies with lower birth weight than anticipated, given their gestational age. Researchers at Sahlgrenska Academy, University of Gothenburg, conducted a study on 59,000 pregnant Norwegian women in collaboration with the Norwegian ...
This press release is available in German.
Immune system B cells play a crucial role in the defence of pathogens; when they detect such an intruder, they produce antibodies that help to combat the enemy. They concurrently and continuously improve these molecules to more precisely recognize the pathogens. A team of scientists with participation of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) has discovered that during this process the cells are able to advance their own evolution themselves by increasing the selection pressure through previously-produced antibodies. ...
