Michael Patrick / AP file

People crowd a gun show in Knoxville, Tenn., on Dec. 28.

Attempted illegal gun purchases occur 30,000 to 40,000 times each year among U.S. firearms retailers, according to a first-of-its-kind survey of gun sellers published Monday.

Would-be patrons seek to sway sellers to keep  transactions off the books or, more commonly, use stand-ins — often girlfriends or wives — to fill out required legal forms and undergo federal criminal background checks necessary to purchase firearms, according to the survey by the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California-Davis.

Perhaps the most alarming finding in the study — the first to attempt to quantify the frequency of unlawful attempts to buy guns and retailer corruption — is that some firearms dealers are "bad guy magnets," who even though they deny the most attempted “straw-man” and undocumented purchases tend to suffer the most gun thefts and appear to receive the most visits from federal agents tracing guns used in crimes.

 “They have a high-risk clientele (which may in part be) because the retailers themselves are known to look the other way," said Dr. Garen J. Wintemute, author of the study published in "Injury Prevention," a peer-reviewed health journal, and director of the Violence Prevention Research Program. "But it all goes together: The retailers who had the most denied sales were also the ones most likely to sell guns that were used in crimes.”

"The (responsible) retailers consider this a very serious problem that deserves stiff punishment," he added. 

Cutting down so-called "straw" purchases of guns is among the measures being pushed by gun-control advocates in the wake of the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, which left 20 children, six school employees and gunman Adam Lanza and his mother dead.

On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill that seeks to make it a federal crime to purchase a firearm for someone who is not legally allowed to own a weapon, such as a convicted felon. President Barack Obama has urged the full Senate to approve the measure.

Wintemute’s team mailed surveys to 1,600 gun dealers, pawnbrokers and gunsmiths who sell 50 or more firearms each year and received back 591 completed questionnaires. Participating retailers reported that would-be clients tried to make 2,051 straw purchases and 2,254 undocumented buys during the previous year.

The researchers extrapolated those rates across the nearly 10,000 U.S. gun dealers and estimated that about 34,000 straw purchases and about 37,000 attempted undocumented purchases were attempted nationally during that span. (Those figures only reflect the instances where the retailers realized they were dealing with straw buyers, so the actual number of bogus buyers is likely higher.)

'Flashpoint': NBC News special report on guns in America

“The key word there is ‘attempt’ " said Andy Molchan, director of the National Association of Federally Licensed Firearms Dealers, which has about 1,000 members. “You know, 10 16-year-olds probably go into one liquor store during each year and attempt to buy a bottle of whiskey. But if they only attempted (and were denied), they didn’t buy it.”

Still, Molchan acknowledged that "straw-man buying for people is a problem. There are two big sources for criminal guns —  No. 1 is theft from private homes and the other is straw-man purchases: they buy a gun for somebody who is a felon and they sell it to the other person for a mark up. It’s been a problem for a long time.”

For that reason, he said, members of the firearm dealers association all receive forms that they fill out during each sale — and ask the buyers to sign — attesting that the weapon is solely for that buyer and will not be re-sold in a secondary market to a felon or any other person who is restricted by state law from owning a gun. The forms have been in use for about 30 years.

“Our association is not against increased laws and increased penalties for people who are buying guns for people who are felons or shouldn’t have guns,” Molchan said. “We don’t have any objections to that.”

Many illicit, stand-in gun buyers are women, Wintemute said, citing firearms-trafficking statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Partly for that reason, he argues that reports indicating that women make up a rising share of the gun market "are a myth." 

According to ATF, in nearly 20 percent of straw purchases, the buyer “is an intimate partner — the girlfriend or the spouse — of the real purchaser,” Wintemute said. “In (ATF) training materials, and just in common knowledge around the industry, one of the markers of a straw purchase is a woman who is purchasing when a guy is just standing around nearby in the store.” 

More from Open Channel:

• Man wrongly imprisoned in murder case wins $13.2 million in civil rights lawsuit
• Abu Ghaith trial may illuminate Iran's treatment of al-Qaida leaders it detained
• New names show up on list of top Obama donation bundlers

Follow Open Channel from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook 

Department of Justice

Richard Schmidt

FBI agents recently warned community leaders in the Detroit area about a possible racist plot by a convicted felon and alleged neo-Nazi sympathizer who was arrested after he was discovered with an arsenal of assault rifles  and other weapons, a law enforcement official tells NBC News.

“The FBI averted a catastrophe in this case, there’s no doubt about it,” Steven M. Dettelbach, the U.S. attorney in Cleveland, said in an interview.  

New details about the case of Richard Schmidt, the owner of a sporting goods store in Bowling Green, Ohio,  dramatically highlight what law enforcement officials say are major loopholes in the nation’s gun laws. Schmidt, 47, is a convicted felon who spent 13 years in Ohio state prison for a homicide after being convicted of killing a man and wounding two others in a shooting during a traffic stop, according to state prison records.  Under federal law, Schmidt, who was released on parole in 2003, is barred from possessing any firearms.

Yet when FBI agents last December searched his home and store, they discovered a cache of 18 weapons that included AR-15 assault rifles, 9 mm Ruger and Sig Sauer pistols, shotguns, high-capacity magazines and more than 40,000 rounds of ammunition. Schmidt was originally reported to have been arrested on charges of trafficking in counterfeit goods, but was indicted last month on four federal charges —including possessing illegal weapons, body armor and ammunition. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

“As a matter of policy, I don’t comment on pending cases,” his lawyer,  Andy Hart, a federal public defender in Toledo, said when reached by telephone.

Dettelbach, who is overseeing the case,  said that federal agents have been unable to determine how and where Schmidt obtained  his weapons, prompting officials to conclude he likely acquired them at gun shows or through private sales --  where under federal law no background checks are required. . 

“It’s scary,” he said about Schmidt’s arsenal of weapons. “It’s not … that I won’t say” where Schmidt got his guns. “It’s that sitting here today as a senior federal law enforcement official in northern Ohio, I can’t say.” 

The investigation into Schmidt was conducted by a  FBI Joint terrorism Task Force whose agents said they discovered he was tracking African American and Jewish leaders in the Detroit area.  When agents conducted their search, they said they found  evidence suggesting Schmidt harbored neo-Nazi sympathies, including a video of the 2005 national meeting of the National Socialist Movement — in which speakers  wore  black swastika  arm bands and gave the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute. “This is a war! This is a battle for our survival!” one speaker shouts on a video of the meeting obtained by NBC News.  Other seized items, according to federal search warrants, included a  list of national Jewish-owned businesses and paraphernalia from the “Waffen SS,” Adolph  Hitler’s military force in Germany.

'Very unsettling, very disturbing'
Two community leaders briefed on the case tell NBC News that agents also found a notebook in which Schmidt had listed the names, addresses and other personal information of Detroit area community leaders. Although Schmidt was already in custody, and remains in jail pending trial, the evidence in the notebook prompted agents to warn the leaders about what they had found.

Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit NAACP, said that FBI agents showed him a page of one of Schmidt’s notebooks which included information about members of Anthony’s  family as well as distances between his home, office and his church. They also told him they were concerned about “a possible threat against the NAACP and me in particular,” he said.

“It was mind blowing,” Anthony said. “Very unsettling, very disturbing, and it really kind of made me angry.”  When he was told about Schmidt’s weapons, Anthony said, “I made the comment that this guy is a one man army and they said, ‘Yes, looks like it.’” 

 The FBI gave a similar briefing to Scott Kaufman, the executive director of the Jewish Federation of  Metropolitan Detroit. He said agents also showed him a page of Schmidt’s notebook showing his name and the names of others in leadership positions in his organization, as well as the names of tenants in his building and driving directions to his office.

“When I saw my name on a piece of paper along with information about our organization and our building written by an alleged neo-Nazi, it was certainly unnerving,” he said.

Anthony and Kaufman said the FBI asked them not to share copies of the notebook pages with NBC News because Schmidt’s case is ongoing. They also said agents had no specific evidence of what Schmidt might have been planning  –  or whether he was working with anybody else.  An FBI spokeswoman declined comment.

Read previous story:

Feds investigate how suspected white supremacist -- a felon -- obtained arsenal

Federal law does not require such checks for private sales or gun show purchases. Seventeen states have mandated them for handgun purchases at gun shows, though Ohio is not among them. Only six states require background checks for all firearms purchases.  

A new study by the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research has found that 80 percent of those convicted of gun crimes acquire their weapons through private sales – making it virtually impossible for federal agents to trace where they come from or who is providing them. 

“There’s no documentation required for private transactions. So whatever occurs in that zone is invisible to us,” Charles Houser, the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms National Tracing Center in Martinsburg, W.Va., said in an interview.

Related coverage: 'Flashpoint: Guns in America,' an NBC News special report

Dettelbach echoed those concerns. “Our current set of laws for how guns get out the community has a lot of holes,”  he said. “It’s almost like Swiss cheese.” 

(Federal prosecutors recently filed court papers showing that reputed Boston mob figure  James “Whitey” Bulger was able to buy at least 15 handguns and a shotgun while he was on the run as one of the FBI’s "Most Wanted" fugitives. Officials believe he acquired them at gun shows or from private sellers. 

More from Open Channel:

• Expert: US in cyberwar arms race with China, Russia
• Lights, cameras, reaction: Resistance builds to red-light cameras
• Suburban Chicago cops allowed to work 'half drunk,' investigation shows

Follow Open Channel from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook 

Students and parents are only now learning the details of what sheriff's officials in Florida called a "credible" and "dangerous" threat by two classmates who planned to steal an arsenal of weapons and shoot classmates — some of them at random and others on a hit list — more than a month ago.

The two boys — who, at ages 15 and 16, weren't identified because they're juveniles — have been involuntarily committed even though Orange County sheriff's detectives recommended that they be charged with conspiracy to commit murder at Timber Creek High School in Orlando, NBC station WESH reported.

The sheriff's office said the threat was posted on Facebook and that authorities learned the specifics from one of the conspirators, who apparently lost his nerve. It said weapons were found in both boys' homes.

Until the heavily edited investigative report was released over the weekend, all that parents had heard of the plot was a recorded message Jan. 14 from the school's principal that said a student had made threats online and that the threat had been foiled by another student, WESH reported.

School officials couldn't immediately be reached for comment Monday because the system was observing the Presidents Day holiday.

According to the sheriff's report, the suspects confided in each other that they both heard voices, cut themselves and shared an interest in the violent video game "Call of Duty."

Authorities said one of the boys planned to steal his father's semiautomatic rifle and pistol, The Orlando Sentinel reported. With his accomplice, they planned to open fire on a specific group of students and then on other students at random.

Flashpoint: Guns in America

Watch US News crime videos on NBCNews.com

Orange County School Board Chairman Bill Sublette told the Sentinel that the case was "very, very serious," saying it was rare for mentally ill students to go so far as to draw up a hit list. 

Amanda K. Janner, a clinical psychologist in winter Park, Fla., who has successfully treated violent teenagers, agreed that the students' hallucinations, specific date and established access to weapons required an immediate response.

When more than one child is involved, "it certainly does build on itself," she said. "It almost reinforces their beliefs, their thoughts, when somebody else shares that. It normalizes it."

Classes resume Tuesday at Timber Creek. The school district told WESH it plans no special security measures.

Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook.

Related:

• Women defy gun owner stereotype
• Georgia town's law requires gun ownership
• Activists, pols: How did mentally ill killer amass an arsenal?

Earl Curtis, Blue Ridge's president and owner, said law abiding gun owners are buying weapons that they fear might be banned; at the top of the list the AR-15 rifle and the Glock 22 handgun.

However, he's having trouble getting guns to sell.

"Usually we would get anywhere from 10 to 20 guns a week as far as ARs," he said. "Now we get about one or probably one a week if we're lucky."

The phenomenon of busy gun shops is born out by record FBI data on background checks required for gun purchases, the best barometer of gun sales which increased to record levels over the last two months.

Leading up to and after the Dec. 14 tragedy in Newtown, Conn., checks were hitting all-time highs. Background checks inDecember topped 2.78 million, an all-time record, and January came in at just under 2.5 million—-the second highest month ever and a million more than any previous January.

Complete coverage of 'Flashpoint: Guns in America,' an NBC News special report 

Last fall, before the Newtown tragedy, Smith & Wesson reported a record $136 million in sales, a 48 percent increase from a year ago. Sturm Ruger's sales topped $118 million, a 50 percent increase.

In 1995, when Minnesota teen Christian Phillip Oberender killed his mother with a shotgun, he was deemed mentally ill and dangerous by a juvenile court and committed to a psychiatric hospital. Eight years later, at age 22, Oberender was released after living in a halfway house. But in January, 13 guns were discovered in his home, including an AK-47, a Tommy gun and shotguns, according to court documents. He was charged with being a felon in possession of firearms.

“I think everyone was quite scared to be honest with you,’’ Oberender’s neighbor, Dennis Hilk, told NBC News.

Police also found a chilling note addressed to Oberender’s deceased mother, according to court documents.

“I feel the good part of me fade away,’’ he wrote in the note. “I don’t know how long I can hold it in for. The monster want out. I know what happens when he comes out. He only been out one time and someone die.”

Oberender’s arrest has left gun control activists and local politicians vowing to close the loopholes that allowed Oberender to amass an arsenal.

“In the polarized world that we're in right now it seems as if you're either for quote-unquote gun control or for addressing the mental health issues when the reality is that we need to reduce gun violence by doing both,’’ Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak told NBC News.

Oberender, 32, is believed to have obtained a legitimate firearms permit due to a number of snafus, including the fact that the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension had no record of him murdering his mother (an issue that is currently being investigated). Oberender’s attorney did not respond to an interview request by NBC News.

Police were tipped off to his weapons stash when Carver County Sheriff Jim Olson, who was a young detective 18 years ago when Oberender was sentenced, heard that the man had posted pictures of guns on his Facebook page. Olson went online and found photos of Oberender toting weapons and posts expressing sympathy for the shooters in the school massacres at Columbine High School and Newtown, Conn., according to court documents. A warrant was obtained to search the house, which led to the discovery of Oberender's arsenal.

“He should not have guns posted on Facebook,’’ Olson told NBC News. “He should not have guns.’’

Olson shudders to think what could have happened if the name Christian Phillip Oberender had not rung a bell when he heard about the Facebook page.

“This certainly could have turned out differently for us — for Carver County, for Minnesota, and for America,’’ he said. 

Read more: 

'The monster want out': Mentally ill killer amassed huge arsenal, police say

Obama unveils sweeping new gun control proposals

Biden: New gun controls likely won't end shootings

Biden: White House 'determined to take action' on gun reform

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords arrives on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013, for a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on gun violence.

President Barack Obama is promising to focus his State of the Union address primarily on the state of the economy – but victims of gun violence are taking advantage of the high-profile event to try to shine a spotlight on their cause.

Among the happenings in Washington this week for activists: TV ads, lobbying, a fundraiser, filming for new TV spots, a White House visit and a Capitol Hill press conference.

And then there’s the speech itself, where victims of gun violence – including former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the mother of slain Chicago teen Hadiya Pendleton, and a little girl from Newtown, Conn. – will watch the president’s address from inside the House chamber.

The goal: Maintain public pressure, sparked by the December massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, for Congress to write new gun laws.

“When the president talks about guns, he’s going to have enormous support in the gallery and in the country. Ultimately we think he’ll have it in the Congress too,” said Mark Glaze, director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group led by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Obama advisers say the economic portion of the annual presidential address will focus on strengthening the middle class, book-ending his inaugural address last month.

Obama didn’t explicitly advocate for gun control in that speech -- though he did make clear his intention to prioritize such efforts in his second term after largely ignoring the issue during his first four years in office. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have launched an intense effort to highlight the need for measures to prevent gun violence in the wake of the Newtown shootings and have tried to build a coalition in support of their efforts.

“Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm,” Obama said in the inaugural address last month.

The president plans to visit his home city of Chicago on Friday, where aides say he’ll highlight the need to combat gun violence in what has become the murder capital of the nation, with the vast majority of killings related to gang violence.

And sitting with first lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday night will be Cleopatra Pendleton, the mother of the Chicago teen who was shot and killed just weeks after performing with classmates at the presidential inauguration.

Other victims will accompany members of Congress after Democratic Rep. Jim Langevin of Rhode Island – himself paralyzed in a gun accident – pushed his colleagues to offer up their hard-to-come-by tickets. The girl from Newtown, whose name hasn't been released, will attend with her mother as a guest of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

FLASHPOINT: Read more of NBCNews.com's series on gun violence, gun ownership and gun legislation

Giffords, shot while meeting with constituents in Tucson in 2011, and her husband, Mark Kelly, will attend the speech as guests of Rep. Ron Barber, who replaced her in the House, and Arizona Sen. John McCain.

People who watch the speech on a cable network will see Giffords on their TV sets before the speech begins. Her PAC, Americans for Responsible Solutions, is spending six figures to run an ad featuring the former congresswoman insisting that “Congress must act” to reduce gun violence. It will air right before and again after the president’s address.

Uphill battle in Congress
Dozens of gun violence victims will stay in Washington on Wednesday, when they'll lobby their own members of Congress to back new gun control laws. And they’ll also be cutting ads for the Mayors Against Illegal Guns group. Those spots, largely bankrolled by Bloomberg's vast personal fortune, will then run in key congressional districts.

The New York mayor has already spent nearly $1 million to attack former Rep. Debbie Halvorson for her “A” rating from the National Rifle Association; Halvorson is locked in a Democratic primary for former Illinois Rep. Jesse Jackson’s vacant seat.

Giffords and her husband are also raising money for their PAC this week, holding a breakfast fundraiser at Washington lobbyist Heather Podesta’s office on Wednesday morning with tickets that run from $1,000 to $10,000 apiece. A Tuesday night fundraiser at a Capitol Hill restaurant is $100 per person. Their group claims to have already raised $1.5 million, and Bloomberg has made a six-figure donation.

Along with Giffords’ public presence, Bloomberg’s deep pockets and support of law enforcement organizations and other groups from around the country, Obama is poised to mount the largest effort to pan federal gun control measures in years – and opinion polls suggest Americans believe gun laws should be more strict. But the president’s advisers and allies privately acknowledge they still face long odds.

Most congressional Republicans, especially in the House of Representatives, have either remained silent on the matter or expressed outright opposition to stricter gun regulations. Some Democrats have also expressed uneasiness with some of the president’s gun control proposals.

Quickly becoming the highest priority: passing a bill that would require universal background checks for gun purchases. Under current law, people can buy guns from private sellers without getting a background check.

The NRA is opposed to that measure. But a bipartisan group of senators, including Republicans Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Mark Kirk of Illinois, have been working on a bill that would require those checks.

Bloomberg’s group also supports a ban on assault weapons and seeks to limit the number of ammunition rounds in a magazine, but it’s widely acknowledged that such measures, especially a ban, face an uphill battle in the Senate.

“I do not support an assault weapon ban because the definition of assault weapon is still hard to come by,” the NRA-backed West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said Monday on MSNBC. “I think there’s a much more effective approach we can take.”

Manchin is working with Republicans on background check legislation.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to hold hearings on a potential package of new gun laws later this month.

At least one member of Congress will be trying to show off pro-gun bona fides. First-term Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, who’s already said he favors impeaching Obama over his gun control agenda, has invited rocker and gun enthusiast Ted Nugent as his guest on Tuesday night.

Nugent made waves during the presidential election campaign when he announced that if Obama were re-elected, “I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year.”

Nugent did the interview in April 2012. He met with the Secret Service shortly after making the comments.

Related:

Nugent appearance at State of the Union a potential distraction for GOP

Gabby Giffords stars in new gun-control TV ad

Hadiya Pendleton's mom: State of the Union will be 'bittersweet'