Background Checks and Speed Bumps: A Comparison

April 1, 2013

You might have seen NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre on Meet The Press last Sunday, where he said gun background check system was "a speed bump" for law-abiding citizens and "does nothing to anybody else."

I'm not often in agreement with Wayne, but this is actually an extraordinarily apt metaphor. Like speed bumps, background checks are a simple, commonsense measure that don't inconvenience law-abiding citizens and have a proven track-record saving lives. For most gun buyers they take less time than ordering a cup of coffee, and they bring felons, the seriously mentally ill, and other dangerous people to a dead stop. If anything, the background check system should function more like speed bumps and apply to all gun buyers alike -whether they are purchasing from a gun dealer or a private seller.

Thefact sheet below provides some more details, and please don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any additional questions.

Mark Glaze
Director
Mayors Against Illegal Guns

Background Checks and Speed Bumps: A Comparison

On NBC's Meet The Press on March 23, 2013, NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre compared gun background checks to speed bumps: "[A background check] is a speed bump for the law-abiding. It slows down the law-abiding and does nothing to anybody else."[1]

Speed bumps are in fact an excellent metaphor for gun background checks - but LaPierre is wrong about their value. Both speed bumps and background checks save lives, and neither imposes much burden on people going about their business. If anything, the background check system should function more like speed bumps do: they apply to everyone equally.

• Car accidents and guns kill tens of thousands of Americans every year.
  • 33,687 Americans were killed in car accidents in 2010.[2] Faster driving is associated with more fatalities,[3] so simply by slowing drivers down, speed bumps prevent accidents and save lives.
  • 32,672 Americans were killed with guns in 2010, and firearm homicide is the second leading cause of injury death among Americans aged 15-24.[4] Because felons and other dangerous people are at a higher risk of committing gun violence, federal law prohibits them from buying guns.[5] Background checks enforce this law--by screening prospective gun buyers and blocking sales to those who are prohibited.
• Both speed bumps and background checks are proven life-savers.
  • Children who live within a block of a speed hump are 60 percent less likely to be hit and injured by a car on their street than children that do not.[6]
  • Each year, the background check system blocks 150,000 gun sales to dangerous people prohibited by law from having them -more than 2 million sales blocked since the system's inception in 1998.[7] And states that require background checks for all handgun sales have 48 percent less gun trafficking,[8] 17 percent fewer firearm aggravated assaults,[9] and 38 fewer women shot to death by an intimate partner.[10]
• Neither speed bumps nor background checks are a burden.
  • Speed bumps don't keep drivers from getting where they want to go. Communities have decided that the minor inconvenience of slowing down near schools, parks and other places with lots of pedestrians is well worth the lives it saves.
  • Background checks don't keep gun buyers from getting any firearm they want. A check takes about 90 seconds to complete. Most people don't mind waiting a couple minutes to save a lot of lives.
• Drivers can't avoid speed bumps. But anyone can avoid a background check.
  • While background checks are required for dealer sales, almost anyone can buy a gun from an unlicensed "private seller" with no background check, no questions asked. An estimated 40 percent of gun transfers happen this way.[11] Treating sales by licensed and unlicensed sellers equally and requiring background checks for all buyers would keep guns out of the wrong hands.
  • If federal law required a background check for private sales, sellers and buyers would meet at a licensed gun dealer to get their check, rather than a parking lot or other public place. This isn't burdensome either - because there are 58,344 gun dealers in the U.S., nearly twice the number of post offices and four times the number of McDonald's locations.[12] A Mayors Against Illegal Guns analysis found that 98.4 percent of Americans live within 10 miles of a gun dealer.[13]
• We know a lot about speed bumps - but not nearly enough about gun violence.
  • The federal government has subjected speed bumps and other 'traffic calming' interventions to tens of millions of dollars of rigorous evaluation to determine that they work, and to use them effectively.[14] Over the last decade, this has produced a dramatic national decline in traffic-related deaths.
  • Under pressure from the gun lobby, the U.S. government has withdrawn almost all public support for research on ways to prevent gun-related deaths and injuries - including the background check system.[15]

[1] Meet the Press, Mar. 24, 2013, transcript, available at: http://nbcnews.to/ZNPGdL
[2] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "2010 Mortality Multiple Cause Microfiles," available at: http://1.usa.gov/1034fJt
[3] I Johnston, "Reducing injury from speed related road crashes," Injury Prevention, 2004, 10 (5), 257.
[4] Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "10 leading causes of injury deaths by age group," available at: http://1.usa.gov/11Ef9ud
[5] Daniel Webster, Jon Vernick, Katharine Vittes, Emily McGinty, Stephen Teret, "The case for gun policy reforms in America," 2013, available at: http://bit.ly/147wP1Z
[6] June M. Tester, George W Rutherford, Zachary Wald, and Mary W. Rutherford, "A matched case-control study evaluating the effectiveness of speed humps in reducing child pedestrian injuries," American Journal of Public Health, Apr 2004: 646-50.
[7] Between the inception of the NICS system in 1998 and 2012, the FBI issued 987,578 denials (source:http://1.usa.gov/XfXP8b). Between 1998 and 2010, state and local agencies issued 945,915 denials, and it is estimated they have issued 150,000 denials in the two years since data was last released (source:http://1.usa.gov/Z8vYsa).So in total, the background check system has almost certainly issued over 2 million denials since its inception.
[8] Daniel Webster, Jon Vernick, & Maria Bulzacchelli, "Effects of State-Level Firearm Seller Accountability Policies on Firearm Trafficking," Journal of Urban Health, July 2009.
[9] Uniform Crime Reports, FBI, 2011. An aggravated assault is an unlawful attack with the purpose of inflicting severe or aggravated bodily injury and using a weapon or means of inflicting severe harm, including assaults or attempts to kill or murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and mayhem. Law enforcement agencies in46 states and DC submitted sufficient data for analysis - NY, IL, HI, and MS did not.
[10] U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Supplementary Homicide Reports, 2011.
[11] Philip J. Cook & Jens Ludwig, Guns in America, 1996, available at http://www.policefoundation.org/pdf/GunsinAmerica.pdf. 2,568 individuals, including 251 gun owners, were surveyed by telephone and asked how they obtained their firearms.
[12] AggData, December 28, 2012, available at: http://www.aggdata.com
[13] Type 1 and 2 FFLs (dealers in firearms other than destructive devices, and pawnbrokers). Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. January 2013, available at: http://www.atf.gov/about/foia/ffl-list.html
[14] "Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Overview," National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration, http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/administration/pdf/Budgets/FY-2013_Budget_Highlights.pdf.
[15] Mayors Against Illegal Guns, "Access Denied," Jan. 2013, available at: http://bit.ly/ZnNtlL

Press Contact:
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Alex Katz: [e-mail] or 617-721-3779

/PRNewswire-USNewswire -- April 1, 2013/

SOURCE Mayors Against Illegal Guns