by William Wandersee Jr.

Created on: January 13, 2009   Last Updated: November 17, 2010

There is a compelling reason that increasing punishment instead of increasing gun control can lower firearm violence, and suprisingly it has little to do with the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms. Instead, it has everything to do with where those arms are coming from.

The average gun-owning American has followed the proper legal procedures to obtain their firearms - and Federal and State governments are doing their best to keep guns out of the hands of criminals via background checks.

Currently, the FBI conducts handgun transfer checks for 26 states and long gun checks for 36; the other states have their own internal investigative agencies.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice's Bureau of Justice Statistics in 2004, 126,000 firearm sales or transfers were rejected - 50 percent due to the purchaser having a felony conviction or indictment. A domestic violence misdemeanor conviction or restraining order was the second most common reason for rejection by State or local agencies.

However promising that number, there were a total of 8,084,000 transfer requests - meaning the number of rejections was only 1.6% of the total. But while government works to cut off the source of legal firearms, criminals simply look to another source - stolen and illegal weapons. Estimates of the number of legal weapons stolen nationwide every year range from 100,000 to 600,000.

In 1997, the government conducted a survey of State Prison inmates who used a weapon in commission of their crime. The survey found that less than 2 percent had bought their firearms at a flea market or gun show, while a staggering 80 percent had gotten the weapon from family, friends, a street buy, or an illegal source.

The FBI estimated that 66% of the 16,137 murders committed in 2004 involved firearms. But murder is not the only crime these illegal guns are involved in. Between 1993 and 2001 victims were confronted by offenders armed with guns in about 27 percent of robberies, 8 percent of assaults, and 3 percent of all rapes/sexual assaults.

U.S. residents were victims of crimes committed with firearms at a annual average rate of 4 crimes per 1,000 people age 12 or older. During the nine-year period studied, there were an average of 847,000 violent crimes committed with firearms.

While background checks and increased scrutiny of would-be gun owners can help alleviate the situation, increased punishment offers a quick and clear solution. The more criminals that are behind bars for using illegal weapons, the fewer there will be on our streets.

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