As Florida's annual Legislative Session continues in Tallahassee, some of the hot-button issues have come back into the spotlight. One such issue is gun sales and background checks in the state of Florida.

At a recent press conference in Tallahassee, Equality Florida's Public Policy Director Hannah Willard noted that a relatively large percentage of gun sales happen without standard background checks. Here's what Willard said:

"Experts estimate that 40 percent of gun sales occur in no-questions-asked transactions that often take place at gun shows or on the internet."

Our partners at PolitiFact Florida decided to look at Willard's statement to see if it was true. PolitiFact reporter Allison Graves says that Willard's statement rates FALSE on the Truth-O-Meter. Graves says that Willard is using outdated information to support her claim.

"After we started our research, we found that Willard was actually citing a statistic from a 1994 survey," Graves said. "Now, that survey did find that 40 percent of people had received guns in some kind of no-questions-asked transaction, but those statistics were including circumstances like guns being given as gifts or guns being given as an inheritance. Including that data skews the numbers, so that adds to the cloudiness of the claim."

Graves notes that newer data exists that supercedes the 1994 survey.

"We also found out that a survey done in January of this year was recently released, and after polling about 1,500 adult gun-owning people, the data showed that about 22 percent of respondents acquired their gun without a background check," Graves said.

Because of the use of outdated information, as well as the inclusion of responses that skews the numbers, PolitiFact rates Hannah Willard's statement FALSE on the Truth-O-Meter.

SOURCES: No-questions-asked gun transactions