Advice on how to argue about Background checks from PR company that Bloomberg has hired

A copy of the PR manual for Bloomberg AKA Mayors Against Illegal Guns is available here.  In this post, I am just discussing five of their comments regarding background checks.

Here are my responses to their counter arguments.

1) Do the polls really show that the vast majority of Americans or gun owners really support expanded background checks?  My response is available here.

2, 3, and 4) Are millions of guns being bought without background checks?  Are gun shows a likely source of guns for criminals?  Are terrorists really using gun shows to obtain weapons?  About 0.7 percent of guns owned by criminals are obtained at gun shows.  Of course, the original claim that there is no "loophole" in the sense the term is used is correct and you might note that the PR response ignores this.  The real issue though is whether back ground checks in general are working.  Here is one of my many discussions on the issue available here.  The ultimate issue is whether gun show regulations reduce crime rates and if you see Chapter 8 in my book The Bias Against Guns.  Chapter 10 in the recent third edition of More Guns, Less Crime has a much briefer and less complete discussion, but it has more up-to-date data.

5) This 30 percent is meaningless.  It is 30 percent of the high risk cases that the ATF investigated.  It is not a random sample.  For example, if the ATF was really good at picking what cases to go after, the percentage would be 100 percent.