The proportion of people being denied permission to buy firearms at Virginia gun shows who then are arrested has been increasing over the past two years, a pattern that one local criminologist said should please gun control and gun rights supporters alike.
In 2011, the first year Virginia State Police began tracking gun show transactions, 10.6 percent of the people denied permission to buy firearms were charged with an offense related to being someone legally prohibited from possessing a firearm. That proportion rose to 12.4 percent in 2012 and more than doubled to 27 percent last year.
"I would think this is a positive sign for both gun control advocates and gun rights supporters," said Thomas R. Baker, a criminologist and an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University's L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, who analyzed recently released state police gun data for the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
It's something for gun rights supporters, Baker said, who individually and through the NRA have been calling for stricter enforcement of existing gun laws instead of passage of additional ones. "This clearly shows an upward trend in enforcement" in Virginia, he said.
"Likewise," Baker said, "gun control advocates can point to the effectiveness of background checks for keeping guns out of the wrong hands."
But Baker noted that while the upward trend in arrests for denials is a positive sign, "it's important to note that those who weren't arrested after their failed background check could simply go to a private seller at a gun show and purchase a gun."
Existing law requires only federally licensed dealers to conduct background checks for gun purchasers.
Last year, 73 percent of those denied permission to buy a firearm at gun shows were not arrested, compared with 87.6 percent in 2012, according to Baker's analysis of the data.
"This makes it difficult to understand why anyone still opposes universal background checks," Baker added.
Not all firearm purchase denials correspond with a violation of the law by the would-be buyer, state police said.
Some misunderstand what they are required to disclose on the background check form or unknowingly provide false information, others don't satisfy identification requirements, and a few are accidentally flagged as being prohibited from buying a gun, among various reasons.
The total number of gun show transactions through federally licensed firearm dealers rose sharply in 2012, from 34,501 transactions at 70 shows in 2011 to 51,448 at 67 shows in 2012. But the numbers fell last year to 43,497 transactions at 65 shows.
The number of denials rose slightly from 359 in 2011 to 380 in 2012, but fell sharply to 263 last year.
Baker believes the repeal of Virginia's one-handgun-per-month law, which became effective July 1, 2012, "almost certainly" accounts for the large drop-off in denials between 2012 and 2013.
He noted that between 2000 and 2012, rejections based on attempts to purchase more than one handgun per month among all commercial venues (including gun stores and gun shows) was the most common source of denial during that period, larger than even denials for prior felony convictions.
Despite last year's drop in denials, the number of arrests at gun shows continued to climb steadily, from 38 in 2011, to 47 in 2012 to 71 last year.
The number of denials and arrests represent a miniscule fraction of those involved in total gun show transactions for all three years. Last year, for example, the 263 people who were denied and the 71 people arrested represented 0.6 percent and 0.16 percent, respectively, of the 43,497 total transactions.
But Baker questioned whether this could just be an indicator that people who cannot legally purchase a gun don't usually try to buy them from federally licensed dealers -- "especially since they can go to a private seller at the same gun show and purchase a gun with no background check needed."
"If both gun control advocates and gun rights supporters can agree the felons, the mentally ill, etc., should be prohibited from purchasing firearms, and that background checks are an effective strategy for preventing them from buying guns from licensed dealers, then why not implement this same strategy for all gun sales?"
Last year's 43,497 gun show transactions represented 9 percent of Virginia's record-breaking annual total of 479,253 transactions involving all commercial sales, state police figures show.
In 2013, background checks through the Virginia Firearms Transaction Center resulted in 2,412 people being denied to buy a firearm and 654 arrests, for denial and arrest rates of 0.5 and 0.13 percent, respectively, state police data show. The leading cause of denials -- 602 -- was for felony convictions.
Typically, many of those arrested are charged with falsely misrepresenting personal information on the background check form, such as whether they had been convicted of a felony or been involuntarily committed for mental illness.
Copyright 2014 - Richmond Times-Dispatch, Va.
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
