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.
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