Data held by ICPSR cited in Washington Post blog

Glenn Kessler, author of the Washington Post's Fact Checker blog, cited data on gun ownership held at ICPSR in a post discussing the claim often repeated by politicians that 40 percent of all gun purchases are made without a background check on the buyer.

Kessler analyzed the dataset used to produce this statistic, the National Study of Private Ownership of Firearms in the United States, 1994, to show that the figure is actually much lower -- more like 26.4 percent.

ICPSR holds 17 other studies on the subject of gun ownership as well.

Jan 21, 2013

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