A majority of gun dealers disagree with the gun lobby on expanded background checks. Kathleen Miles writes in The Huffington Post:

A majority of gun dealers support expanded background checks, according to a survey.

Though enhanced checks on potential gun buyers may reduce sales, retailers who responded to the survey revealed near unanimous support for denying gun purchases based on prior convictions, mental illness or a history of alcohol or drug abuse.

The survey was conducted by the University of California, Davis, Violence Prevention Research Program. The researchers released this week the survey’s third report, which will be published in the coming weeks in the Journal of Urban Health.

Using retailer-specific sales data from the FBI, the survey authors identified 9,720 dealers, pawnbrokers and gunsmiths across 43 states who sold 50 or more firearms per year. The FBI didn’t have the data for seven states. From that list, surveys were mailed to 1,601 randomly-selected gun sellers, whose response rate was 36.9 percent.

The authors said they believe the survey is the first to gather gun dealers’ views on federal gun policy.

Read the entire article here.