In the report Gun Control Legislation by the Congressional Research Service notes that under current law, there are nine classes of persons prohibited from shipping, transporting, receiving, or possessing firearms or ammunition:
- persons convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year;
- fugitives from justice;
- unlawful users or addicts of any controlled substance as defined in Section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. §802));
- persons adjudicated as “mental defective” or committed to mental institutions;
- unauthorized immigrants and nonimmigrant visitors (with exceptions in the latter case, which have changed—effective July 9, 2012—as described below);
- persons dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Armed Forces;
- persons who have renounced their U.S. citizenship;
- persons under court-order restraints related to harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or child of such intimate partner; and
- persons convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.
Using the above criteria, in 2009 10,764,237 checks with 150,013 denials. In 2009 the report notes there were 310,000,000 firearms in the US. Estimated firearms-related murders were 10,301 or 3.4 / 100,000. These estimates are down from 1993 to 17.073 and 6.6 respectively.
By comparison, StatsCan reports firearms-related deaths in Canada at 0.53 / 100,000 in 2009.
Gun ownership reported by GunPoloicy.org is depicted below:
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