Criminals acquire guns through social connections, not through theft or dirty dealers

Information from the Cook County inmates lined up with findings in a second study, which identified straw purchasers and gun traffickers as key sources of crime guns in Chicago. Straw purchasers can pass a background check and buy guns that they transfer to others.

This study, “Some Sources of Crime Guns in Chicago: Dirty dealers, straw purchases and traffickers,” is forthcoming in the 2015 Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology. The research was supported by operating grants to the University of Chicago from the MacArthur and McCormick foundations, as well as project grants from the Joyce and McCormick foundations and the Fund for a Safer Future.

By linking ATF information that traced guns to crimes with information from the Chicago Police Department about the person caught with the gun, the researchers could identify which of them were gang members and compare their guns with those possessed by non-gang members.

“Dirty dealers,” who deliberately violate the law and sell to buyers who cannot pass a background check, accounted for less than 5 percent of the guns sold to gang members.

More than 60 percent of the crime guns were initially purchased out of state. Meanwhile, 15 percent of new crime guns confiscated from a man were first purchased by a woman, which suggests a straw purchase.

The findings suggest that targeting by law enforcement of the intermediaries in the underground market, the straw purchasers and the traffickers helps reduce access to guns by some dangerous people, Cook said.

“This research demonstrates that current federal and local regulations are having a big effect on the availability of guns to criminals in Chicago,” he said. “They can’t buy their guns from stores, the way most people do, and are instead largely constrained to making private deals with acquaintances, who may or may not be willing and able to provide what they want.

“Other studies we have done have found that in many cases criminals go without guns because they don’t know how to get one. We conclude that current enforcement is somewhat effective, and devoting more resources to enforcement would further constrain gun access by dangerous people.”

— Read more in Philip J. Cook et al., “Sources of Guns to Dangerous People: What We Learn by Asking Them,” Preventive Medicine, 79, special issue on the Epidemiology and Prevention of Gun Violence (October 2015): 28-36 (doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2015.04.021); and Philip J. Cook et al., “Some Sources of Crime Guns in Chicago: Dirty Dealers, Straw Purchasers and Traffickers,” Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 104, no. 4 (2015): 717-59