In the runup to the Black Friday shopping weekend, the Associated Press's Matt Stroud hysterically claimed that "more gun sales are effectively beating the system" of background checks. Tim Graham at NewsBusters caught how Stroud described the situation as "a 'perfect storm,' like the disastrous ship-sinking movie."
Stroud's report gave readers the clear impression that there are no potential repercussions if a gun buyer who should not have been allowed to purchase a gun based on a completed background check is sold one before such a check is completed when the three-day waiting period expires. Yesterday, the NRA's Institute for Leglislative Action added important information Stroud should have included in his report.
Here are the first four paragraphs of what Stroud wrote:
FBI data show thousands of gun sales beat checks
(Note: The same headline was used at the AP's national site.)
More gun sales than ever are slipping through the federal background check system - 186,000 last year, a rate of 512 gun sales a day, as states fail to consistently provide thorough, real-time updates on criminal and mental histories to the FBI.
At no time of year is this problem more urgent. This Friday opens the busiest season for gun purchases, when requests for background checks speed up to nearly two a second, testing the limits of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS.
The stakes are high: In the U.S., there are already nine guns for every 10 people, and someone is killed with a firearm every 16 minutes. Mass shootings are happening every few weeks.
"We have a perfect storm coming," FBI manager Kimberly Del Greco told The Associated Press during a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the system.
Stroud's text was clearly calculated to stoke hysteria.
The AP reporter failed to provide necessary context. He did not tell readers the percentage of gun sales which occur before background checks get done; the answer is less than 1 percent. He also didn't estimate how many of those sales would have been prevented if the background checks had been completed on time.
The FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System says that "21,093,273 background checks (were) processed through the NICS in 2013," and that "Denials issued by the NICS Section totaled 88,203."
186,000 is less than 1 percent of 21.1 million.
The "denial rate" for completed background checks is 0.42 percent (88,203 divided by 21.1 million).
Assuming Stroud's stat of 186,000 purchases made without background checks completed is correct, and safely assuming that their rejection rate would have been roughly the same as for those which were run through the system in time, roughly 800 purchases were made by people who shouldn't have been allowed to complete their transactions (0.42 percent times 186,000).
Even then, those 800 people who shouldn't have been allowed to purchase a gun but were are far from being in the clear, as the NRA-ILA noted:
AP Reporter Grasps for Negative Spin on Gun Sales Surge
Last week, Associated Press reporter Matt Stroud incorrectly implied that the recent increase in firearm-related background checks run through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) frequently results in violent criminals beating the system and acquiring guns.
... What Stroud neglected to mention--besides the fact that gun ownership is at an all-time high and the nation’s murder rate has fallen to at least a 57-year low--is that the FBI continues running checks after the three-day period has elapsed and reports all ultimate denials to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) on a daily basis. Thereafter, BATFE personnel and local law enforcement officers can and do take action to separate prohibited persons from any firearms they may have acquired during the delay.
Stroud also implied, incorrectly, that every individual who is delayed is presumptively prohibited and would pose a danger if successful in obtaining a firearm. That is certainly not the case ... (over 99 percent of the time — Ed.)
... over time such NICS checks have steadily increased with a continuing decline in violent crime. The NICS data vindicate gun owners and give all Americans even more reason to doubt gun control supporters’ half-baked theories and unsupportable claims.
One can't tell whether Stroud's work was due to laziness, bias, or some combination of both. Regardless, his resulting report was lousy, incomplete and horribly misleading.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
