Public Opinion on Selling Guns to a Stranger without a Background Check 

One way that guns get into the wrong hands is via gun sales without a background check.  Using data from a nationally representative on-line survey conducted in 2015, HICRC’s David Hemenway, Deborah Azrael and Matthew Miller find that 72% of American adults agree with the statement that “whether it is legal or not, it is NOT acceptable to sell a gun to a stranger without a background check”; 11% disagree.  Subgroups less likely to agree are young adults, men, conservatives, those with less than a high school education, and gun owners.  Still, most Americans, including 64% of gun owners believe that selling a gun to a stranger without a background check is unacceptable behavior.   The article appears online first in the journal Injury Prevention.