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One argument against gun control is:

Gun control only hurts law-abiding citizens. A person intent on doing harm will simply just acquire it illegally.

And so my question is, how good is this argument? That is to say, how easy is it to acquire guns illegally in the United States? By ease, I am thinking of several factors:

1. Chances of getting caught?


2. Expensiveness of the gun?


3. The type of the gun? Can you get assault rifles?


4. Do normal everyday people have access to the black market? Is it easy to find?


5. Wouldn't the usual characteristics of a mass shooter (young and unlikely to be rich or particularly smart) make it harder to acquire a gun illegally?

That's a somewhat specious argument, because the ability to illegally obtain weapons is made easier by lax gun laws, and the guns that make it to the illegal market, by and large, start out as firearms that are legally sourced from the manufacturer. The patchwork of gun laws means that states with the least restrictive laws for purchasing guns become the source of weapons for crimes in states with more restrictive laws. Ironically, the less rational gun rights advocates obliquely reference this in an often-heard argument that high gun crime rates in restrictive areas is proof that gun regulation simply doesn't work, as opposed to the argument that more uniform restrictions are needed. More uniform laws that set the bar at the more restrictive level are universally opposed by politically active gun advocates.

At the state level, more guns typically means more crime and more death, researchers have consistently found. So some states have enacted stricter laws to limit gun purchases and to keep firearms from falling into the wrong hands. But these efforts can be undermined by the free flow of guns across state borders, some of it legal, some of it not.

Data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms underscores this point: In 2014, ATF traced the source of over 170,000 guns used in crimes in the U.S. And well over a quarter of them -- 28 percent -- were used to commit crimes in a state other than the one they were purchased in. The map below shows which states these border-crossing crime guns came from.

Washington Post: Where guns used in crimes come from

In addition to this initially legal purchase, but then circumvention of stricter gun laws, you also have the illegal guns that are legally purchased, and then stolen from households. Laws that try to impose restrictions and enforcement on how firearms are secured in the home are also opposed.

More than half a million firearms are stolen each year in the United States and more than half of stolen firearms are handguns, many of which are subsequently sold illegally. Philip J. Cook & James A. Leitzel, “Smart” Guns: A Technological Fix for Regulating the Secondary Market 7, Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, Duke University, Working Paper Series SAN01-10 (July 2001)

Giffords Law Center To Prevent Gun Violence: Statistics on Gun Trafficking & Private Sales

In addition to that, you have measures that have been passed that make it more difficult for police, the FBI and the ATF to enforce the laws that are on the books.

The ATF is not allowed to maintain a computer database of gun transactions. They are restricted from how often they can inspect any dealer, which does not allow them to focus on problem dealers, which are involved in a hugely disproportionate number of guns winding up in the wrong hands. There are also massive, intentional loopholes in existing laws like ones that allow circumvention of background checks at gun shows for private sales.

For example, under current laws the bureau is prohibited from creating a federal registry of gun transactions. So while detectives on television tap a serial number into a computer and instantly identify the buyer of a firearm, the reality could not be more different.

NY Times: Legal Curbs Said to Hamper A.T.F. in Gun Inquiries

And, finally, the argument that we should not have laws because only the law-abiding will comply with them is a patently absurd standard, since that is true for each and every law ever created, no matter how correct and effective, or how pointless and poor-thought.

It is very easy to get a gun illegally.

1) Be a non-citizen/resident, minor, felon, or have been adjudicated to be insane

2) Go to Texas

3) Look for "deer stick", "bangs", "outdoor toy" on craigslist.

4) Meet the seller on a gun range with cash and test that the gun works properly

5) Don't tell him that you are 1)

I did actually encounter someone who forgot 5) and told me was a felon while we were on the phone so perhaps it is harder than it looks.

For bonus points you can make the purchase with counterfeit money and mail the gun back to your home state.

Expense: within the normal used pawn shop range, minus sales tax

Chance of getting caught: none

Type of gun: Whatever the seller has. usually pistols, shotguns, and
semiautomatic rifles. People with full automatic stuff have a special license and probably will only sell properly.

Normal people have access to this method

A responsible seller is unlikely to sell to an obvious minor.

Well, drug dealers buy them. So it would seem that it is about as easy to buy an illegal firearm as an illegal drug. About twenty-five million people had used illegal drugs in the last thirty days extrapolating from one recent survey. Another survey estimates that 130,628,000 have used drugs at some point. So a sizeable minority have had contact with someone who could have sold them a gun or directed them to such a source and a significant number of people have had such contact within the last thirty days.

The greater problem with buying illegal guns in the United States is that it is difficult for a gun transaction to be illegal. It is far more likely that the person will buy the gun legally but without official sanction (since official sanction is not required).

It is worth noting that due to the way that Barack Obama changed the school to prison pipeline (alternative view), it is even more difficult to be in a situation where it is illegal to buy a gun. The recent Dayton shooter and the previous Parkland shooter both bought their guns legally despite evidence that they had considered engaging in a school shooting while in school. Because no one ever officially arrested them, there was nothing blocking them. The Parkland shooter even passed a mental health check that would have blocked him from having a gun. He was officially ruled "at low risk of harming himself or others".

Let me describe why this question cannot be answered with U.S. data.

Chances of getting caught?

Most U.S. gun purchases can be made without notification of any authority at a gun show. Although a person banned from purchasing a weapon is not supposed to buy a gun there, there is no system in place validate who cannot own a weapon. Because of the right to remain silent, the only way you would be caught is by saying "officer, I am sorry, I know that buying this gun was illegal, but I didn't mean to do it."

Expensiveness of the gun?

Except for automatic weapons, there is no premium for illegal weapons unless one would be needed immediately. That is mostly a convenience fee in the same sense that 7-11 charges more for its products than a regular grocery store.

The type of the gun? Can you get assault rifles?

Although the new purchase of fully automatic weapons is illegal, there is no prohibition on the purchase of antique fully automatic weapons. There is a $200 tax.

Do normal everyday people have access to the black market? Is it easy to find?
Wouldn't the usual characteristics of a mass shooter (young and unlikely to be rich or particularly smart) make it harder to acquire a gun illegally?

There isn't really much of a black market except for higher-end military-grade weapons.

However, U.S. data doesn't really allow for the measurement of your questions. Since the people who tend to get caught tend to be the least skilled and the most skilled won't disclose that they illegally purchased a weapon, an instrumental variable would need to be found that removes the selection bias from the estimator.

Guns are really tracked by exception. If I buy a gun from a friend, there is no database that shows I own the gun. Some older guns, such as antique weapons, have no identifying marks. If a gun I own with a serial number was stolen and I report it, then a record exists and its subsequent use can be shown to have happened via illegal acts. However, if I died and happened to own guns and someone stole them, they might only get into a database if the executor was aware the gun existed and could provide an identifying number.

There is a recordkeeping system for new weapons to the original buyer, but there does not exist a chain of title recordkeeping system. Because of this, any estimator will be a biased estimator unless another instrumental variable could be discovered that would estimate the frequency of trades. Guns are often passed down two or three generations.