Where do criminals get their guns?

OP here. Interesting thoughts.

A few replies, FWIW.

The CIA has been tied to a whole lot of the guns floating around Latin America. Such guns are brought into Mexico by the shipping container full almost daily for the cartels.
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I don't believe this. Sounds a bit Michael Moore-ish conspiracy theory to me.

2. Purchased through a “straw man”.

This is too much work and too much at risk for all parties. I would guess this is a very small %
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I am just guessing here, but I tend to disagree. I somehow picture in the fringes of the criminal community a small cottage industry of people with clean records buying guns to re-sell to people they know at least a little.

At this point you can get the whole paper at:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...91743515001486
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I was thinking there was no way I was going to churn through some scholarly dissertation on gun crime. But I started reading this thing, and it's actually very interesting. To those of us who lead straight lives, this sort of look into essentially a whole different culture is fascinating.

Here in Utah we have a very large website dedicated to buying and selling firearms. I have bought many firearms over the years from this website. 90% of the time I meet the seller in a random parking lot and hand over cash in exchange for the weapon.
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I guess I'm used to NY state, where handguns are strictly controlled. Even before the new "Safe Act" law which mandated a background check for even private sales, I got the impression on Armslist that virtually nobody would be willing to take the risk selling a handgun to an unknown person.

Personally I know I will get flamed for this, but I don't think it would be unreasonable to require background checks on private sales like this. Sure it takes an extra 30 minutes to complete the sale and whatever the fee is these days for a NCIS check.
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This is what is required now in NY as part of the "Safe Act". It didn't sound too bad, because I'm used to quick NCIS check, and it was only supposed to cost 10 bucks. But it turned out its a really burdensome pain in the neck, and a FFL has to actually take ownership of the gun, and then transfer it. I sold an LCP to a guy and he paid almost $50 for this check, on a $275 gun. So if there was a fair and simple way to do it, I'd be OK with it too, but it really has turned into just another way to discourage gun sales.

I guess I was really interested in how new guns enter the black market for the first time. Again, being in NY state, I forgot that in many states a new handgun can enter the system in a fairly casual manner, i.e. no pistol permit required. Here, it's hard to imagine someone jeopardizing their hard-earned and hard-scrutinized CCW permit to do a straw sale.

David
 
Gun bans are going to be just as successful as alcohol Prohibition or the drug war, a boon for drug sells and illegal alcohol production and smuggling. Great for business if you're a smuggler. It won't affect anyone that wants a gun, whether you are a criminal, a terrorist or just someone who wants to protect his family or himself. It just makes criminals out of otherwise law abiding citizens. But you already know that, pardon the rant.
 
Folks can try and tie the CIA to gunrunning into the country all they want, but the facts are that at least twice large amounts of weapons were seized before they were smuggled in to California from China. Between that and the 100 million Kalashnikovs floating around just the African continent alone tells me we don't need to be concerned about the CIA.

We have enough guns right here already for the common criminals to choose from. No need for container loads.
 
The University of Chicago and Duke University surveyed 99 detainees in the Cook County Jail to determine how they obtained their guns. The criminals generally obtained their guns from people they know, usually friends and family.
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Yes, but this begs the obvious question; Where do those "friends" and/or "family" get the guns in the first place?
 
OP. adamBomb nailed it. That is reality. It seems like you may have an agenda against private sales. That is not the culprit in getting guns illegally. Most of them are stolen and/or bought on the street ILLEGALLY. More background checks are not going to help as criminals don't buy guns that way.
 
It seems like you may have an agenda against private sales.
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This is a 100% wrong and irresponsible assumption you have made.

Most of them are stolen and/or bought on the street ILLEGALLY
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Bought on the street illegally. No kidding. If you actually read my posts, instead of trying to read between the lines and fantasize about what you imagine I am thinking, you'd see that my question is how do they get to be "on the street" in the first place? Where do they cross the line from being legal to being illegal?

More background checks are not going to help as criminals don't buy guns that way.
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Again: No kidding.

David
 
Personally I know I will get flamed for this, but I don't think it would be unreasonable to require background checks on private sales like this. Sure it takes an extra 30 minutes to complete the sale and whatever the fee is these days for a NCIS check. I am not sure why so many oppose this. Oh well...
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What about the guy who lives out in the boonies that wants to sell a gun to his neighbor and has to drive and hour or two to the nearest FFL? Also, the fee for a NICS check is whatever the dealer wants to charge for it- possibly driving the cost up enough where it is no longer worth buying.
 
From http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/07/politics/obama-executive-action-gun-control-town-hall/index.html:

He [edit:Obama] then disputed the notion that most criminals got guns illegally or through personal connections, making background checks -- a major focus on his policy initiative on guns -- of little utility.
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To the OP, can you please forward this to the President? It is surprising to me that for a group of policy makers so "grounded in 'facts' and 'science,'" they don't read a lot.
 
The problem with "Studies and Statistics" is that they can be manipulated to fit an agenda.

Ask the anti-gun groups to do a study and they'll come up with statistics to support whatever message is currently on their plate.

Ask the pro-gun groups and they'll do the exact same thing.

Where do criminals get their guns? I'd say wherever they can.. They will always hunt down the weakest link in their circle of comfort / knowledge and exploit it.
 
That's a nice set of cliches. I take it you don't actually read the debates in the criminological literature or go the conferences. There are pretty analyses of how this occurs. Just discarding the literature allows the anti story to predominant.

There are decent studies going way back. Use Google scholar and check them out.
 
From what I hear anecdotally there are plenty of Mainers who can pass background checks who are also willing to trade guns for drugs to out of staters who can't pass background checks. I'm not convinced that banning stuff that the market demands works in the real world.
 
The cartels almost certainly have several HUNDRED THOUSAND armed soldiers.

In 2012 it was estimated that Mexican cartels employed over 450,000 people directly and a further 3.2 millions peoples livelihoods depended on various parts of the drug trade.
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Mexico has a total population of 125,000,000 people. That means about 3% depend on the cartels for their livelihood.
That is off wikipedia, but it links to another source following that statement. I didn't check the source. From my experience and in my opinion, the numbers are almost certainly much larger. Much as the "estimate" of deaths is now at 120,000 and missing 270,000. Even if you accept those numbers 450,000 people is slightly more than McDonalds employs in the US. 3.2 million is more than Wal-Mart employs. The cartels then have tens if not hundreds of thousands employed in the US.
You don't arm hundreds of thousands of people, in fact more than twice as many as are in the USMC, using straw buys at small FFLs in border states. It simply is not feasible.
The same goes for ISIS and Al Quaeda.

Once you have organizations of that size running black markets there is no way to stem the flow. The US government can't control the hundreds of thousands of well vetted top secret clearance holders, how could you ever expect the cartels to stop their criminal employees from selling guns?
 
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Big time crime lords can get whatever they want. One of the Chicago street gangs (Blackstone Nation?), entered into a discussion with Libya a few years ago & got a rocket launcher. It turned out that their discussions were monitored by the Feds & they lost the rocket launcher & some people went to jail.
Again referring to Chicago, many Blacks have Southern roots and when fathers, grandfathers, uncles came her in the 1940s-1950s, they brought their guns with them. As these guys die off, some of the guns go to family members a few of which may be criminals.
I saw a documentry which showed how some people would get ahold of a few guns & rent them to other people in their group, when that person wanted to do some shooting.crime. This makes a certain amount of sense as if your a known gangbanger, your likly to be pulled over & frisked by the police every week or two. Gangbangers can't carry everyday like CCW holders, unless they want to spend a lot of time in jail.
IMO the average street thug has a hard time getting a gun, not to mention exrta amunition. Range time is not on the radar. As a consiquince
they (as a group) tend to be pretty poor shooters. It seems in a lot of the drive by shootings they miss their intended target & hit a bystander.
Just my 2$
 
Additional insights

Heat is temporarily off in my building & am typing this to keep my mind off being cold.

Saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel (?) about a small village in the Philippines that had made a cottage industry of making forged 1911s by hand. They interviewed a guy and he showed how he and his two sons were able to make about one pistol a week. These were taken to a larger village and then to Manila where they were shipped to America's west coast where they were sold to criminals for fairly big bucks ($1000+). Probably not talking about a lot of guns here, but it's part of the pie.
 
get ahold of a few guns & rent them to other people in their group
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The only place I've ever heard anything reliable about renting guns for crime being a normal occurence was in Japan and not recently.
IMO the average street thug has a hard time getting a gun, not to mention exrta amunition.
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They don't. In any country.
It seems in a lot of the drive by shootings they miss their intended target & hit a bystander.
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Most police officers on foot hit the intended target with less than 20% of rounds fired. Out a car window, while moving, with someone else controlling botht he speed and direction of travel, it probably isn't any easier.
America's west coast where they were sold to criminals for fairly big bucks ($1000+)
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I seriously doubt it. There is nowhere in the world where a factory firearm is not available on the black market for significantly less.
 
Saw a documentary on the Discovery Channel (?) about a small village in the Philippines that had made a cottage industry of making forged 1911s by hand. They interviewed a guy and he showed how he and his two sons were able to make about one pistol a week. These were taken to a larger village and then to Manila where they were shipped to America's west coast where they were sold to criminals for fairly big bucks ($1000+). Probably not talking about a lot of guns here, but it's part of the pie.
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Some one was telling me about that at my LGS. I think it was a NatGeo program, and the topic was "ghost guns."

While it is true that there are hundreds of illegal one horse guns shops in the Philippines, from what I saw, most of those guns are for local consumption since it is somewhat of a hassle to obtain a legal firearm. Additionally, Abu Sayyaf is always looking for guns as is the NPA.
 
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