* According to the 1991 Survey of State Prison Inmates, among those inmates who possessed a handgun, 9% had acquired it through theft and 28% had acquired it through an illegal market such as a drug dealer or fence. Of all inmates, 10% had stolen at least one gun, and 11% had sold or traded stolen guns. * Studies of adult and juvenile offenders that the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services conducted in 1992 and 1993 found that 15% of the adult offenders and 19% of the juvenile offenders had stolen guns; 16% of the adults and 24% of the juveniles had kept a stolen gun; and 20% of the adults and 30% of the juveniles had sold or traded a stolen gun. * From a sample of juvenile inmates in four States, Sheley and Wright found that more than 50% had stolen a gun at least once in their lives and 24% had stolen their most recently obtained handgun. They concluded that theft and burglary were the original, not always the proximate, source of many guns acquired by the juveniles.