HowStuffWorks H.R. 8 Mandates Gun Background Checks. Why Is It Stuck in the Senate? This study, conducted by Northeastern University and Harvard University researchers and published in Annals of Internal Medicine in 2015, estimated that 22 percent of gun owners who had obtained a weapon in the previous two years had done so without going through a background check. Worse yet, 96 percent of prison inmates who had been prohibited […]