From Massachusetts, naturally, and full of inconsistencies, as usual. (Sigh) Time for another "intellectual prostitute" letter.
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/
The GOP's gun hypocrisy
One of the starkest differences between the Republican and Democratic year-2000 party platforms is over gun control. The Democrats call for more government regulation of the nation's 200 million firearms, and the GOP wants less -- despite the ugly fact that in the United States more than 30,000 people are killed by guns each years in homicides, suicides and accidents. It's the highest national gun-carnage rate in the world.
The phoniness of the National Rifle Association-backed assertion by George W. Bush that these pesky gun problems will vanish if existing laws are more vigorously enforced is belied by powerful new data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Even while it has been badly understaffed and underfunded by the same GOP-controlled Congress that demands tougher law enforcement, in recent years the ATF wisely, if belatedly, has assigned agents to trace the origins of guns uses in crimes.
Most guns used in robberies and other crimes, the ATF has learned, were neither stolen nor borrowed from friends of the criminals. They were bought from traffickers who had purchased the weapons from a mere handful of federally licensed gun dealers. The agency discovered that about 1.2 percent of the 83,000 U.S. licensed dealers supply nearly 60 percent of the guns used in committing crimes.
Why doesn't the ATF go after these relatively few corrupt dealers? The agency tries, but thanks to the NRA's grip on legislators, many existing laws are so weak and so loophole-ridden that the crooked dealers are able to escape prosecution. It's no crime, for example, for gun dealers to lie on federal forms. Despite sworn testimony that dealers have lied in writing about whom they had sold guns to, federal judges have thrown out ATF cases for lack of a clear basis on which to hang a conviction.
Nor is the ATF empowered to use undercover operations to test the honesty of suspected crooked dealers. Such operations are routine in the war on drugs; but drug lords are not big congressional campaign contributors, as the gun lords are. So undercover operations are out of bounds. Its hands tied by an NRA-owned congressional majority, the ATF is not permitted even to maintain computerized records of gun sales. The agency may inspect a dealer's records no more than once a year. Understaffing makes it difficult to keep up even with that lax schedule. In 1998 the agency had just 1,631 agents, only nine more than it had in 1973. Last winter, the Clinton administration requested funding for 500 more agents and 1,000 state and federal prosecutors to work exclusively on gun crime, but Congress has not approved the funding.
Massachusetts and Boston have led the way in showing the extent of national gun-control failings by plugging loopholes in state and local laws and cracking down hard on dealers, traffickers and straw purchasers whose guns are involved in most crimes. One dramatic result is that the murder rate in Boston has plunged, especially among juveniles; only one Boston young person has been killed by a gun in two years. Putting corrupt gun dealers out of business saves many innocent lives. The obvious first step in making this sane policy national is to return control of Congress to the party dedicated to this most elementary and sensible of gun-control measures.
© 2000 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and New England Newspapers, Inc
------------------
"The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside
the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light." (Romans 13:12)
http://www.berkshireeagle.com/
The GOP's gun hypocrisy
One of the starkest differences between the Republican and Democratic year-2000 party platforms is over gun control. The Democrats call for more government regulation of the nation's 200 million firearms, and the GOP wants less -- despite the ugly fact that in the United States more than 30,000 people are killed by guns each years in homicides, suicides and accidents. It's the highest national gun-carnage rate in the world.
The phoniness of the National Rifle Association-backed assertion by George W. Bush that these pesky gun problems will vanish if existing laws are more vigorously enforced is belied by powerful new data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Even while it has been badly understaffed and underfunded by the same GOP-controlled Congress that demands tougher law enforcement, in recent years the ATF wisely, if belatedly, has assigned agents to trace the origins of guns uses in crimes.
Most guns used in robberies and other crimes, the ATF has learned, were neither stolen nor borrowed from friends of the criminals. They were bought from traffickers who had purchased the weapons from a mere handful of federally licensed gun dealers. The agency discovered that about 1.2 percent of the 83,000 U.S. licensed dealers supply nearly 60 percent of the guns used in committing crimes.
Why doesn't the ATF go after these relatively few corrupt dealers? The agency tries, but thanks to the NRA's grip on legislators, many existing laws are so weak and so loophole-ridden that the crooked dealers are able to escape prosecution. It's no crime, for example, for gun dealers to lie on federal forms. Despite sworn testimony that dealers have lied in writing about whom they had sold guns to, federal judges have thrown out ATF cases for lack of a clear basis on which to hang a conviction.
Nor is the ATF empowered to use undercover operations to test the honesty of suspected crooked dealers. Such operations are routine in the war on drugs; but drug lords are not big congressional campaign contributors, as the gun lords are. So undercover operations are out of bounds. Its hands tied by an NRA-owned congressional majority, the ATF is not permitted even to maintain computerized records of gun sales. The agency may inspect a dealer's records no more than once a year. Understaffing makes it difficult to keep up even with that lax schedule. In 1998 the agency had just 1,631 agents, only nine more than it had in 1973. Last winter, the Clinton administration requested funding for 500 more agents and 1,000 state and federal prosecutors to work exclusively on gun crime, but Congress has not approved the funding.
Massachusetts and Boston have led the way in showing the extent of national gun-control failings by plugging loopholes in state and local laws and cracking down hard on dealers, traffickers and straw purchasers whose guns are involved in most crimes. One dramatic result is that the murder rate in Boston has plunged, especially among juveniles; only one Boston young person has been killed by a gun in two years. Putting corrupt gun dealers out of business saves many innocent lives. The obvious first step in making this sane policy national is to return control of Congress to the party dedicated to this most elementary and sensible of gun-control measures.
© 2000 by MediaNews Group, Inc. and New England Newspapers, Inc
------------------
"The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside
the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light." (Romans 13:12)
