I was doing house cleaning on my PC and found a file relevant to this thread. It's a research paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (dated 2005) titled The Effect of Gun Shows on Gun-Related Deaths: Evidence from California and Texas. You can get a copy of your own here. Here's the crux of the biscuit:
VII. Conclusion
Thousands of gun shows take place in the U.S. every year. Gun control advocates argue that the “gun show loophole” that exists in many states makes it easier for potential criminals to obtain a gun. Gun shows may also affect suicide rates by increasing the ease with which individuals who are contemplating suicide can obtain a more lethal device. On the other hand, opponents of gun show regulations argue that gun shows are innocuous because potential criminals and other individuals can acquire guns easily through other channels.
In this paper, we have investigated the effect of gun shows using eleven years of data on the date and location of every gun show in the states of California and Texas, the nation’s two most populous states. We have combined this with information on the date, location, and cause of every death occurring in these same two states during our eleven-year study period. We focus our attention on homicides and suicides, with firearms accounting for 61 percent of the combined 106,205 deaths from these two causes in California and Texas during the 1994 to 2004 period.
Our identification strategy tests whether the number of homicides or suicides changes in the weeks immediately following a gun show. We investigate separate models for the two states given that they sit at opposite ends of the spectrum with respect to their regulation of gun shows, with California arguably the strictest and Texas among the least stringent. To the extent that regulations such as those in place in California reduce any deleterious effects of gun shows, one might expect to detect a larger effect in a relatively unregulated state such as Texas.
Our results, however, provide no evidence to suggest that gun shows lead to a substantial increase in the number of homicides or suicides in either California or Texas. If anything, we find evidence of a modest decline in the number of homicides following the average gun show in Texas, though our aggregate implied effects amount to just one percent of all homicides in the state of Texas. Taken together, our results suggest that gun shows do not increase the number of homicides or suicides and that the absence of gun show regulations does not increase the number of gun-related deaths as proponents of these regulations suggest. (emphasis added)
There are, however, two important caveats to our analyses. First, we are considering only the effect in the geographic area immediately surrounding gun shows. To the extent that firearms purchased at gun shows are transported more than 25 miles away from the show, our identification strategy will not capture this effect. Additionally, we consider the effect only in the four weeks immediately following a gun show. However, guns are durable, and thus to the extent that effects occur much later, our analysis will not capture this.
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You probably are aware there there is no such thing as the "guns how loophole," that's just a pejorative that hoplophobes use in an attempt to stigmatize the law that allows gun shows to exist (and they have an irrational hatred of anything that enables firearm ownership). Anything that legally can happen at a gun show also can happen every ounce as legally in the parking lot of a Piggly-Wiggly. Or in the back pew of church at Sunday morning mass. There is no loophole.
Attacks on gun shows actually are a veiled attempt to restrict gun owners' constitutional rights, not just of the 2nd Amendment but especially of the 1st, specifically the right to peaceably assemble. They want to limit the deplorables' right to assemble because if allowed to assemble without interference, lawful commerce in firearms might take place. Because in the end that's all a gun show is, a place where like-minded individuals can congregate and engage in commerce of a lawful product.
And besides, as this study shows, there is no hard evidence that there is any connection between gun shows and gun crime. It's all fiction, just like the "loophole" itself.
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