Posted on 12/03/2007 6:19:05 PM PST by Oshkalaboomboom
Legislators must take a stand and stop the cycle
Drivers passing through Georgia often go home with their trunks filled with pecans, peaches, peanuts or other souvenirs.
Unfortunately, some also head home with guns, giving rise to the term "iron pipeline" to describe the illegal flow of firearms from Georgia to the Northeast.
The state's weak gun laws make it easier for criminals to buy a firearm here than in New York or New Jersey, where tighter controls govern firearm sales. Those states, for example, require background checks for purchases at gun shows, and permits and waiting periods to buy handguns. None of those precautions is in place in Georgia, which not coincidentally has a 25 percent higher murder rate than New York and New Jersey.
Not surprisingly, Northern states are getting tired of watching their residents gunned down by weapons imported from the South. That's why New York City sued 27 gun shops, including some in Georgia, whose weapons showed up in crimes 800 miles away. Last year, four Georgia shops and 11 in other states settled the case and agreed to court-appointed monitoring of their sale practices.
Some shops argued that they could not be sued in New York City because they don't do business there, but U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein ruled in August that the lawsuits could proceed because the city had offered strong evidence that the shops were "responsible for the funneling into New York of large quantities of handguns used by local criminals to terrorize significant portions of the city's population."
Among the allegations in the lawsuits: Adventure Outdoors of Smyrna was the source of at least 21 handguns recovered at New York crime scenes between 1994 and 2001. The suits also contend that at least 126 weapons first sold by the Gun Store in Doraville were recovered in New York crime investigations between 1996 and 2000.
The lawsuits charge that the guns are often obtained through straw purchases, in which buyers legally barred from owning a gun, such as a convicted felon, recruit a stand-in to come with them and fill out the federal forms to pass the background check.
"Georgia is one of the leading states for out-of-state guns ... you've got a number of [gun shop] defendants who are notorious for their guns ending up at crime scenes, " says John Feinblatt, the criminal justice coordinator for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Federal data show that 9,500 guns originally sold by Georgia dealers were recovered at crime scenes in 2006, including 2,800 found in New York and other states.
The state's reputation as the crime gun capital of the country ought to embarrass Georgia legislators into passing some common-sense legislation that would help police combat gun trafficking.
Georgia does little now to protect residents from gun violence or to assist police in solving gun crimes. For instance, Georgia doesn't limit buyers to one handgun per month. It does not mandate that handguns be ballistic fingerprinted, a step that would greatly aid law enforcement in tracking crime guns. Nor does the state restrict sales of the weapon of choice for gangs, the cheap Saturday night special. The state even forbids police to maintain gun sales records, which would assist criminal investigations.
Despite all those glaring omissions, the only gun law likely to get attention in the 2008 General Assembly is the guns-in-parking lot bill, which would force private employers to allow employees to bring guns onto their property.
The bill tramples private property rights by denying companies the right to set their own policies for their company-owned parking lots. Many employers oppose the bill, saying they must be able to set the rules to protect their workplaces.
Complaints by the business community killed the bill last session, and this time around opponents have even more ammunition to defeat the bill. In October, a federal court blocked an Oklahoma law permitting firearms in parking lots, ruling that it conflicted with the demands of the federal Occupational Health and Safety Act that workplaces safeguard workers from guns.
The parking-lot bill is a priority for the National Rifle Association, which is in annual need of a manufactured controversy with which to rouse its membership and keep its dues flowing. But the bill — like many other gun issues — doesn't resonate with a great many gun owners, who understand and even applaud the call for reasonable regulations on gun ownership.
No one wants a society where gun laws are so lax that a hotheaded 16-year-old seeking to settle a score can buy a gun on the street. That's what Georgia has now, and it pays for it with its high rate of gun violence. Other states are paying as well.
i cannot stand these people. so misinformed. by transporting guns across state lines, these people are already committing federal felonies! how about we enforce the gun laws we already have?!?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Gun control laws increase the power of government and the
criminal element over the average citizen and serve no
other purpose.
- Robert E. Lee
A goverment that fears arms in the hands of it people
should also fear ROPE!
- Nathan Bedford Forrest about 1845
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those
who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes.
Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better
for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than
prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked
with greater confidence than an armed one.
- Thomas Jefferson quoting Cesare Beccaria, Criminologist 1764.
WHY DO THEY WANT OUR GUNS?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j73SsNFgBO4
How about we repeal all unconstitutional gun laws, which is all of them? The author of this article is right, only criminals benefit (a little bit) from weak gun laws, and only criminals benefit (a lot) from extremely strict gun laws, e.g. as in Washington DC, where the criminals essentially run the place. The only thing that benefits the non-criminals is the absence of laws that weaken them (the non-criminals) in the face of criminals.
Who had their fingers on the triggers on those guns that originated in the south?
Sounds to me like a northerner problem.
There, fixed it.
Isn't it typical that the writer of this garbage completely ignores the fact that the people who are transporting these guns in violation of are not obeying the law of the nanny states they are allegedly "smuggling" guns into? Listen you goofball, and i know you are out there looking in vain for response to your garbage article. Lawfull americans do not break the law, nor do they use their guns to commit crimes. Crimminals are the ones who break the law and commit crimes with guns. No "law" is going to make them turn into lawful, honest citizens of the USA. I dare suggest that you are not an honest, law abiding citizen of the USA either, because you are attempting to decieve people in this country into thinking a gun law would be obeyed by the crimminal minded people in this country ( which a stupid liberal like you would let out of prison anyway so they can commit the same crime over and over again) and because you campaign to deny the good citizens of this nation their constitutional right to bear arms and to defend themselves.
An armed society is a polite society.
Folks unemcumbered with a thought process will have difficulty comprehending the wisdom of that concept.
The solution is not to make it more diffcult for law abiding citizens in Georgia but rather to make it easier for the law abiding citizens of New York and New Jersey.
If they are criminals, then by definition they break laws.
Criminals cannot buy firearms. It's illegal. Since it's already a "law", There should be no crime. FACT: Not one law abiding citizen has ever committed a crime with a firearm in the countries entire history.
I’d bet everything I have that Maureen Downey packs heat.
The least this scribbler could do when he chose to use alliteration was to carry it through into the second sentence: pecans, peaches, peanuts...PISTOLS.
PUTZ! I shant deign to comment on the utterly flawed premise of the article.
Ping
Why not just enforce the current laws. Criminals don’t care how many laws they break, gun laws only effect the law abiding citizens and their ability to protect themselves.
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