Guess HCI and the Gov didn't do their home work. 80% were bought at dealers. I don't think so according to the NY Times
Gun Flow to Criminals Laid to Tiny Fraction of Dealers
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Issue in Depth: America Under the Gun
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By FOX BUTTERFIELD
study performed for the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has found a compelling pattern of evidence demonstrating
that guns used to commit crimes move quickly from manufacturers to
juvenile offenders and older criminals through a relative handful of corrupt dealers.
The finding is particularly significant in light of the bitter gun-control debate in Congress, suggesting that many of the proposed solutions --child safety locks, for instance, or a ban on the import of high-capacity ammunition clips -- do not address the most important problem: some
dealers' repeated sales to criminals or to "straw purchasers" buying on their behalf.
The report found, for example, that a mere
389 federally licensed dealers, of 104,855
such dealers around the country, had sold
half of all guns used in crimes in 1996 and
1997 that could be traced by law enforcement to their initial sale.
It also found that more than a fifth of all
guns recovered in crimes in those two years
had been purchased from a licensed dealer less than a year earlier, and that almost half had been bought from dealers within three years.
In addition, the study concluded that 49.1 percent of guns involved in crimes that could be traced to the original dealer were used in those criminal acts within 50 miles of the sale.
Until recently, it had been widely believed that for the most part, criminals and juvenile offenders stole their guns, and that with 230 million guns in America, there was little that law enforcement could do to stanch the flow to them.
"This report shows that dealing with illegal gun trafficking is not hopeless and that there are a limited number of dirty dealers and detectable patterns of trafficking," said David Kennedy, a senior researcher at the
John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
The report, prepared for the firearms agency by a researcher at Northeastern University, places special emphasis on what the agency
terms "time to crime": the length of time from the first sale by a dealer to the point at which a gun is recovered in a crime. A short time to crime,which the A.T.F. defines as less than three years, is considered an
indicator of possible illegal activity by dealers or traffickers, and a time of less than a year a very strong indicator.
Therefore, the study said, it is highly significant that 49.6 percent of all guns traced by the firearms agency in 1996 and 1997 were used in crimes less than three years from their date of purchase.
A scant 110 dealers, or 0.1 percent of the total, each sold more than 50 guns with an average time to crime of less than one year.
The study, by Glenn L. Pierce, co-director of the Center for Criminal Justice Policy Research at Northeastern, provides the most detailed examination to date of the conclusion that a tiny number of dealers are
responsible for a disproportionate number of guns used by criminals.
That conclusion was suggested in an earlier A.T.F. report and in a report issued this spring by Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat who has been among the nation's leading advocates of gun control.
Yesterday Schumer and six co-sponsors introduced in the Senate a bill
that would crack down on any dealer to whom at least 25 guns used in crimes were traced in any one-year period. The legislation would allow the firearms agency to conduct an unlimited number of inspections of such dealers' records -- the current limit is one a year -- and would make it easier for the agency to suspend their licenses, a process that is now extremely difficult. In addition, the bill would prohibit all straw purchases.
Some of the study's most compelling data involved the time to crime of certain kinds of guns. In California, for example, inexpensive, rapid-firing Lorcin 9-millimeter pistols recovered in crimes in 1996-97 were found to have been sold by dealers an average of only 170 days beforehand. Similarly, Lorcin 9-millimeters had an average time to crime of only 202 days in Mississippi, 318 days in North Carolina and 331 days in West
Virginia.
Another "fad" gun, popular with criminals and juvenile offenders, is the Hi Point .380. In Georgia, it showed up in crimes an average of 215 days after being sold by a dealer. The average in Indiana was 226 days, and in
Illinois 309 days.
"This information shows it is just not a tenable argument for these manufacturers to say they are not aware of what happens to their guns," said Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research
Program at the University of California at Davis.
Firearms manufacturers have repeatedly said they do not know what happens in the use of their guns, and cannot be held accountable for it, because they sell only to wholesalers, who in turn sell to retail dealers.
The manufacturers also contend that even after a crime is committed with one of their guns and they are reached by an A.T.F. official performing a trace through use of the weapon's serial number, they have no way to know what has happened because the firearms agency does not tell them of any crime.
A senior agency official said this argument was not credible. "Every single gun recovered by law enforcement that we trace is a crime gun," the official said. "The manufacturers do not question our agents whether these are crime guns."
The report's finding that 49.1 percent of all crime guns that can be traced to a dealer were used by the criminal within 50 miles of the sale comes as a surprise to specialists. Earlier findings showed that many guns used by criminals in big East Coast cities with strict gun-control laws, like New York, Washington and Boston, were originally purchased in Southern states with lax gun laws, like Florida, Georgia and North Carolina.
The report concludes that this pattern of long-distance trafficking indeed exists, saying a quarter of all guns traced as a result of criminal acts end up more than 500 miles from the original dealer.
But, the report says, there is really a dual pattern of gun trafficking, with an even greater number of guns sold to criminals or straw purchasers by local dealers near the criminals' homes.
The report also provides the first information comparing the role of pawnbrokers who hold Federal firearms licenses with that of regular dealers. Crime guns were traced to only 13 percent of regular dealers in 1996-97, the report found, but were traced to 35 percent of pawnbrokers.
What is unclear is whether the dealers with large numbers of crime guns traced to them are simply stores with a large volume of sales, or whether they instead are simply inclined to be involved in illegal activity. The report also does not distinguish between sales made by dealers in stores and at gun shows.
