Posted on 02/24/2004 1:21:27 PM PST by kimber
The American public should know that a small number of federally licensed gun dealers supplied one of every five guns traced to crimes nationwide yet remain in business. People should know that guns used in 52 fatal shootings and other crimes were traced to one gun shop in Washington state that already had multiple violations of the law. That was before the same shop sold the rifle used by convicted Washington, D.C., sniper John Muhammad and teenage sidekick Lee Malvo to kill 16 people in five states in 2002.
The public won't have access to this information anymore because Congress last month barred the release of such data to the public in the latest cave-in to the gun lobby. A little-publicized measure attached to a spending bill that funds major government agencies forbids the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from making public information about the AFT's records on tracing the source of guns used in crimes. Law enforcement agencies still have access to tracing information, but not the public.
The gun lobby and the Bush administration said public release of such information regarding gun dealers could compromise police investigations and be used to unfairly target some dealers. There is nothing unfair about telling the public that one-fifth of the 373,006 guns traced to crimes between 1996 and 2000 were sold by just 120 of the nation's 105,048 licensed gun dealers. Those figures were compiled by the Americans for Gun Safety Foundation and released in a report last month. It embarrassed the government because nothing was, or is, being done to revoke the licenses of dealers with bad records. Instead, the government chose to muzzle the information source to prevent future reports.
Such studies are not new, although the information in them is typically old. For example, in 2001, 1.2 percent of licensed gun dealers accounted for 57 percent of the guns traced from 1998 crime scenes, the AFT said. At the time, the idea was to trace crime-guns back to the source and shut it down. Apparently, no longer. What better way to spotlight gun dealers whose sales are repeatedly linked to crime guns than by releasing tracing records?
This is especially important to New York, which has among the toughest gun-control laws in the nation. Yet the AFT estimates that 90 percent of the guns used in crimes in the metropolitan areas are brought into the state illegally. It is illegal to bring a gun into New York from outside the state.
The information ban was enforced for the first time earlier this month when a Freedom of Information Act request by The Associated Press for certain gun records was rejected by the AFT.
"This is all part of a calculated strategy to basically shut off the flow of information," Dennis Henigan, legal director for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, told the AP. "It's an effort to make sure that lawmakers, scholars, cities and the general public not have access to information that could actually inform public policy."
That's not a good sign in a year when the federal ban on assault weapons is up for renewal, and the Senate is considering a bill that would immunize gun manufacturers and dealers from lawsuits stemming from crimes in which guns were used
Kinda says it all. Proves that criminals will not let a little thing like the law stop them from commiting crimes. It only makes it easier for them since their victims are defenseless.
Rush is right. These people are much more entertaining when they're out of power!
Should I move to New York?
It sounds like it must be a wonderfully safe pace with all these anti-gun laws. Too bad that New York did not outlaw the flying of airplanes into buildings. 9/11 could have been avoided with a simple law.
The most likely explanation is that 1.2 percent of gun dealers account for more than 57 percent of guns sold.
I got my first shotgun from K-Mart's sporting goods dept. I have a feeling that KMart probably has one FFL license for the corporation itself, and that one license probably accounts for a decent percentage of guns sold in the US. Add to that the other chains that sell guns, and you have a big number
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