A new study conducted by researchers from the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business suggests President Barack Obama's Gun control program should focus on gun manufactures and not just gun buyers.
The aim of the study was to find out how guns travel from the hands of manufactures to criminals. The study was the first of its kind and was published in the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing. For the study, Kevin D. Bradford, an associate professional specialist in marketing at the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business and his team went through over 28,000 court documents to find out what guns were used in particular for most cases of violence and what safety rules (safeguards) did manufactures have in place of the safe distribution of such guns.
"The gun industry is cloaked in secrecy," Bradford said. "We found that 1 percent of gun dealers are responsible for 45 to 60 percent of guns involved in crimes. These dealers divert new guns intended for responsible owners to those that gun restrictions are meant to keep away from the weapons."
Safeguards include background checks for shipping of dangerous weapons to buyers. Bradford was shocked to find that most manufactures of some really dangerous weapons didn't have any safeguards in place and these guns were easily accessible to anyone looking to buy them. He said that there was no proper policies implemented by manufactures to ensure these weapons don't fall into the wrong hands.
"That's pretty significant," Bradford said. "The problem lies in where new guns are sent by manufacturers. We looked at the top manufacturers, which accounted for 97 percent of all gun sales in the United States. A lot of them are not safeguarding their distribution channels. They're not making sure the dealers are doing the things necessary so that their guns stay out of criminals' hands."
Bradford said that if manufactures had proper safeguards in place, there were lesser chances of their guns being used in crimes. This way, dealers too would be discouraged from selling guns to the wrong people. Bradford clarifies that this process is not about keeping law-abiding citizens from buying a gun but just making sure that the wrong people are not in possession of them.
"If we can hold Hasbro accountable for choking hazards for children, it seems reasonable that we should be able to hold gun manufacturers accountable for their intermediaries who distribute to criminals," Bradford says. "Nobody seems to want the government involved in gun control, and the government doesn't have enough feet on the ground for the job anyway, so why not get manufacturers involved? They should be held accountable."
