Anti-Gun Researchers Tracking Thousands of Gun Purchasers in CA

The Truth About Guns reports that "Anti-Gun Researchers Tracking Sales, Personal Data of Hundreds of Thousands of CA Gun Owners." The author of the article saw this at the Sacramento Bee:

Gun buyers in California convicted of driving under the influence are at greater risk of committing a violent crime or a firearm-related offense, a group of researchers at UC Davis found in a broad study that tracks gun purchasers over the span of a decade.

And he asked himself: how did this study track gun purchasers for a decade?

      These researchers — including noted anti-gun rights UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program director Garen Wintemute — used Dealer Records of Sales to identify 160,619 lawful gun owners. They then tracked these individuals, including where they lived, for the period of 2001-2013.

     That was 160,619 handgun buyers. It seems likely they got access to all DROS data, so the number is probably a lot higher.

The lesson is that any records of sales of firearms are just a back door method of registration.