Resumption of gun auction nets Mesa more than $25K

East Valley Tribune ^ | July 25, 2004 | Adam Wallin

[Gun142]

Resumption of gun auction nets Mesa more than $25K

By Adam Wallin, For the Tribune
Mesa raised $25,396 earlier this month at a closed-bid auction of 150 confiscated and retained firearms, the first since an April 2003 change in city policy to allow such sales.

The change was made, at least in part, to alleviate budget troubles, several City Council members said.

"We found that in the past Mesa had made quite a bit of money with gun sales," City Councilwoman Janie Thom said.

In terms of the economic impact of the new policy, she said, "It’s very small, but there are other small contributions that all add up."

Don Traves, a senior evidence technician for the Mesa police, agreed that "it’s probably not a tremendous amount of money for the total budget, but it’s better than nothing." He said the city plans to do up to four auctions a year from now on.

Gerry Anderson, executive director of Arizonans for Gun Safety, wondered whether the risk that an auctioned firearm could end up later connected to a crime is "really worth $50,000 a year."

Bidding at the auctions is for the batch of firearms. A federal firearms license is the only requirement for firearms dealers to participate in the auctions, and Anderson said she believes the government’s supervision of the licensing is too lax.

Her brother, a police officer, was killed in 1994 by a man with such a license. The day after the slaying, the man was killed in a shootout with Michigan police.

It took the government three months to revoke the dead man’s gun license, she said.

"The gun lobby loves to say, ‘Enforce the laws on the books,’ but then they hamper them at every turn and cut their funding," she said, pointing out that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives can conduct only one surprise inspection of a firearms dealer in any 12-month period.

"A health inspector can do a surprise inspection at a taco stand, but an ATF agent can’t do one at a gun dealership?" she said. "There isn’t a whole lot of oversight, isn’t as much protection to the public as they say."

Thom said that she hasn’t "reviewed gun licensing laws lately, but I have a friend who’s a gun dealer and I knew he’s not 100 percent happy with them."

The change in policy, which passed 6-1, bucked the trend of nationwide municipal law. Of the 50 largest cities in the country, according to U. S. Census Bureau data, only Houston and Indianapolis allowed any kind of sale of confiscated firearms as recently as 2002.

Most other cities, including Phoenix, destroy confiscated guns or use them for operations.

Law enforcement professionals have mixed feelings about the auctions.

The International Association of Chiefs of Police officially "encourages all law enforcement agencies to adopt a mandatory destruction policy of all firearms that come into its possession which are unregistered, found or unclaimed property, used in the commission of any crime, surrendered voluntarily by any citizen, purchased for use by that agency, or by any other means" once they have served their law enforcement function.

Ronald Hampton, executive director of the National Black Police Association, said his organization thinks "the idea of the police adding to the proliferation of guns on the street is a bad policy."

But Bryan Soller, president of the Arizona Fraternal Order of Police, said that his organization has "no problem with how Mesa is doing it, as long as they get rid of cheapie Saturday Night Specials and assault weapons."

The Mesa City Council voted to destroy confiscated firearms in December 1998. Before that, the city held gun auctions.

Dennis Kavanaugh, former Mesa vice mayor, was the only councilman to vote against the 2003 proposal. He said the existing policy was working fine and that he saw no reason to change it.

"We’d gotten no complaints," he said.

But Thom objected to the law, describing the council that passed it as "antigun in any form."

City Councilman Rex Griswold agreed, calling the policy "a politically correct knee-jerk reaction to things that happened with guns" before the 1998 vote.

"Hitting you over the head with a frying pan can be much more devastating than a .22 in your foot," Thom said.

David Morse, the owner of Firing Pin Enterprizes in Phoenix, the winning bidder at the auction, compared destroying guns to stop crimes to chopping up cars to stop auto crashes.

"The people shouldn’t arbitrarily be limited in what they can do just because the government doesn’t like it," he said.

Anderson said she is especially concerned about the auctions because of a few highprofile "problem stores" that sell many guns that are later connected to crimes.

She cited a January report on ATF statistics by her organization called "Selling Crime" that found two stores in the Valley had more than 300 guns sold between 1996 and 2000 later connected to crimes.

[Gun142]

"The people shouldn’t arbitrarily be limited in what they can do just because the government doesn’t like it," he said.

[Servant of the 9]

"The gun lobby loves to say, ‘Enforce the laws on the books,’ but then they hamper them at every turn and cut their funding," she said, pointing out that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives can conduct only one surprise inspection of a firearms dealer in any 12-month period.

That is because they abused their authority to harass dealers they had no evidence against, only a 'feeling', and they have spent vast sums collecting data that Congress has specifically forbidden them to possess.

So9

[joesnuffy]

If the left was truly interested in saving lives....they would go after abortionists...mothers who dont use car seats, or put their young ones in seat belts,...people who dont lock up their poisons, or supervise their kids in swimming pools, or while riding their bicycles....

It's the commie gun grabbers pulling the strings behind the scenes that always accentuate or use hyperbole to put fear into the undecided or those timid souls who have never or would never defend themselves, their familes or their own country....when push came to shove..

imo

[TERMINATTOR]

"Hitting you over the head with a frying pan can be much more devastating than a .22 in your foot"

[Gun142]

It took the government three months to revoke the dead man’s gun license, she said.

What's the rush?

[B4Ranch]

Exactly. He's dead right?