The potential for gun shows to serve as places where criminals obtain firearms can be curbed through increased regulation without adversely affecting attendance or business, according to a pioneering study published this month in Injury Prevention, an international peer-reviewed journal for health professionals.

The study, based on field observations made by Garen Wintemute, director of UC Davis' Violence Prevention Research Program, also found that undocumented gun sales between private parties and illegal "straw purchases," in which a person with a clean record buys a weapon for someone with a criminal record, were much more common at gun shows in states with little regulation.

The take-home message of the study, which compared gun shows in California, where they are tightly regulated, with gun shows in states with little government oversight, is that "regulation works," Wintemute said.

Wintemute, a professor of emergency medicine at the School of Medicine, is a leading researcher in the field of injury epidemiology and the prevention of firearm violence. Selected in 1997 by Time magazine as one of 15 international "heroes of medicine," Wintemute is the author of more than 50 published scientific articles on gun violence and prevention.

The study, Gun Shows Across a Multi-state American Gun Market, was based on observations Wintemute made while visiting 28 gun shows — eight each in California and Nevada, six in Arizona, four in Texas and two in Florida — from April 2005 to March 2006. California was chosen because it tightly regulates gun shows — requiring, for example, that gun show promoters be licensed — while the four other states do not regulate gun shows. The four states were chosen because they are the leading sources of guns used in crimes in California.

Among many observations, Wintemute's report found that only 30 percent of gun vendors, both at shows in California and in the other states, were identifiable as licensed retailers; armed attendees were five times as common in the comparison states; and at one show in Nevada, one third of the cars in the parking lot had California plates — an indication, Wintemute said, that California residents travel to out-of-state gun shows to obtain firearms."

Carole Gan is the news service manager for the UC Davis Health System.