How does illegal gun trafficking work?

S

snacktrack

New member
After reading the other post here about "Making Philly gun law tougher" I got to wondering how most criminals actually get their firearms. Does anyone here know any good articles, or real world studies done on this? I have a hard time believing the majority of illegal guns on the street come from gun shops. Is anyone an expert in this subject?
 
I'll tell you how criminals get their hands on guns. It starts by gun owners not keeping their guns secure. Criminals break into gun owner's home and the criminals steal the guns. It's that simple!

If alot more gun owners would be more responsible and keep their guns secure under lock and key when they're not home, we would see a decrease in the number of guns used in crimes. ;)
 
If alot more gun owners would be more responsible and keep their guns secure under lock and key when they're not home, we would see a decrease in the number of guns used in crimes.
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Of course, if a lot more home owners kept their houses more secure we would see a decrease in house burglaries; If a lot more motorists kept their vehicles more secure, we would see a decrease in the number of stolen getaway cars; and if a lot more people kept their money more secure, we would see a decrease in the number of robberies.

Believe it or not, this is a liberal argument.....the natural corollary is as follows:
"Since we know this will never happen, we just need the Government to step in and set some "reasonable" guidelines."

Guns are no different than any other property that might be used to commit or fund a crime. By the time you get it all into a vault, you find yourself living in an underground bunker....and never venturing out.
Rich
 
If alot more gun owners would be more responsible and keep their guns secure under lock and key when they're not home, we would see a decrease in the number of guns used in crimes.
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Unfortunately we might see a decrease in burglaries where firearms are taken, but we might also see an increase in home-invasion style robberies. With the owner home, he can usually be coerced into giving up "mere material objects" to spare his family injury.

If everyone locked up their guns the thugs would lie in wait for a known firearms owner to arrive home, way-lay him at knifepoint and force the opening of the gun safe. Could and did happen here (CA) about six months after the "lock up your weapons" law went into effect.

I don't object to locking up the guns so much as the implication that anytime a gun is left in the home outside of a safe the owner is "negligent". If that's your standard, my argument is how can you justify leaving your automobile parked and unattended? Don't you know it's a temptation for some joyrider or gangbanger to steal it? How many drive-bys, hold ups and other felonies could be avoided if we had a law requiring car owners to put a locking "boot" on the front wheel and remove their distributor cap and take it with them whenever they left the car?
Note: Sarcasm in the same vein as requiring guns to be stored partially disassembled.
 
if criminals didn't commit crimes there would be no more crime nor criminals

where do black market firearms originate? well, they have to start out at a factory, for the most part. i would agree that most of the guns are probably stolen. i would also say that some enter through straw man purchase. i would also say that some enter this country, not through a port of entry. i would say that some are actually manufactured by more skilled criminal types.

i think pretty much any way you can think of to illegally aquire a firearm has been or will be done.
 
The trend I've seen around here is for the local criminal types to use a "straw buyer" with no criminal record--often seems to be a girlfriend of one of the gangers--to go around the local stores and purchase a few guns. Typically low priced semiauto pistols it would seem. Then the guns are either: 1) "Distributed" locally in the high-crime areas, or 2) Taken to places like Chicago, NYC, etc. and sold/traded for dope, at a HIGH profit margin. (Hey, even hoodlums have to pay exorbitant gasoline prices during transport.) ;)
 
Keep in mind that the techniques employed by low-level criminals and gangs to acquire weapons are vastly different than those of well-funded paramilitary groups in third world countries.
 
I think I have the answer, How Does Illegal Gun Trafficking Work:

1. The governments, state or federal take away gun Rights.

2. This in turn creates a black market.

3. The black market creates a great income flow.

4. People, seeing the demand, sets out to supply this demand

5. This supply, since number 1 above has taken place, must be obtained elsewhere

6. This creates more crimes such as theft, robbery, muggings, carjackings

7. The governments, state or federal, take away more gun Rights.

8. This in turn creates a larger demand on the black market

9. The black market creates a greater income flow.

10. More people, seeing the demand, sets out to supply this demand

11. This supply, since number 7 above has taken place, must be obtained elsewhere

12. This creates more crimes such as theft, robbery, muggings, carjackings

13. The governments, state or federal, take away more gun Rights...

Wayne
 
I'm sure the Internet is one of the easiest places to do it nowadays. A person-to-person sale where the selling individual may be a responsible person but can't possibly do a background check himself.
 
I'm sure the Internet is one of the easiest places to do it nowadays. A person-to-person sale where the selling individual may be a responsible person but can't possibly do a background check himself.
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But doesn't there still have to be an FFL and a NICS check somewhere in the process? That's the way it works on the major auction sites--unless it's a long gun sale between two residents of the same state, in which case, if I understand it correctly, there's no Federal jurisdiction. That last scenario is still a little murky to me though--how do you really know who you're selling to? A shipping address doesn't really prove residence.

I lived in Japan for a few years--very low rates of gun ownership and virtually no consumer firearms market, due to strict laws that go back to the Shogun days--peasants couldn't own guns OR swords. Now shotguns are the only thing that's legal for private citizens, and they are regulated up the wazoo. Guess where the Yakuza get their guns? Smuggled in from, that's right, China. And some from Russia too. Gangs of ex- (and even some current) military in those countries make a fortune shipping boatloads of black-market weapons around Asia. There's always a way. The government isn't too upset about it, because the Yakuza guys seem to only shoot each other.

The weapon of choice for a crime of passion there is a knife. An English-language magazine in Tokyo did a story once called "Guns don't kill people; fruit knives kill people." They compiled a list of all the murders that had been committed that year with those little apple-peeling knives. You'd be surprised at how many there were.
 
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