Study shows one in five U.S. gun buyers don't get background check

One in five gun owners in the United States who purchased a firearm in the past two years did so without a background check, according to a new study.

The study, published this week in the journal of Annals of Internal Medicine, analyzed the 2015 survey data collected from 1,613 gun owners, and found that more than 30 U.S. states don't require background checks on private firearm sales while research shows the overwhelming majority of Americans favor universal background checks.

"This is the first direct national estimate of the proportion of gun owners who obtained firearms without a background check," said Matthew Miller, the study's lead author and professor of health sciences and epidemiology in Northeastern University.

A previous analysis, based on a 1994 survey, found that 40 percent of guns were purchased without a background check.

However, Miller said that the 1994 study focused primarily on whether respondents purchased their firearms from a federally licensed dealer.

The new study, conducted by researchers at Northeastern University and Harvard University, asked directly about background checks, and 22 percent of gun owners said they bought guns in the last two years without undergoing background checks.

In states that require a background check for private sales, 26 percent of purchases reportedly went through without a background check, while in states without laws regulating such purchases, the share more than doubled to 57 percent, according to the study. Endi