99% of Americans Live Within 10 Miles of a Gun Dealer

Expanding the federal background checks law to cover all gun sales would require unlicensed sellers to meet their buyers at a gun dealer, who will run a background check in exactly the same way as for sales directly from the dealer’s store. 99% of Americans live within 10 miles of a gun dealer—so it’s easy and convenient to get the background check done.¹Everytown analysis of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) Federal Firearms Licensee (FFL) dealers and U.S. population. Data on licensed gun dealers were obtained from the ATF through November 2018 here: https://bit.ly/2SPLs9O . Data on census block groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau here: https://bit.ly/2BCfBzw . Distance was calculated between the centroid of each census block group and each licensed dealer to determine the closest dealer.  There are nearly 62,000 unique gun dealers across the country. This is more than four times the number of McDonald’s in the United States and twice the number of post offices.²Federal Firearms Listings. Washington, D.C. ATF. https://bit.ly/2SPLs9O . As of November 2018, ATF reported there were 63, 543 Type 1 and 2 licensed gun dealers in the U.S. Analyses were done to determine the latitude and longitude of each licensed dealer and duplicates by latitude, longitude, and state were removed for a total of 61,763 unique licensed gun dealers ; Stores Top Retailers 2018. Washington, D.C. National Retail Federation. https://bit.ly/2NuvfkV ; Postal Facts – Sizing It Up. Washington, D.C. United States Postal Service. https://bit.ly/2tlLGHe.

Percent of Population Within 10 Miles of a Gun Dealer by State