Question about illegal guns and the BATFE

T

Tennessee Gentleman

New member
I know better than to listen to the stuff from antigunners but I was curious about one of the "points" they tend to make about illegal guns. They say that most illegal guns used in crimes come from 1% (or some low number)of the firearms dealers. If there are that few gun dealers selling to the crooks why doesn't the BATFE shut them down? How do these "legally purchased" guns get into the hands of crooks but then can't be traced back to the gun store where they originated. I guess I am looking for a primer on illegal guns and how they get out there on the street. I have never had a run in with BATFE but have read on here that many have. Tom Gresham says they have been called a rogue agency. Anyway, I hope that is clear and apologize if I rambled.
 
I suspect the 1% is a red herring. It is likley that reflects purchases made with a stolen ID and or straw purchases that get past the dealer. Even the government gets caught, here in Indiana the head of the DMV was discovered to be a convicted identity thief a couple of years ago. A 20/20 episode featured an identity thief that assisted the Arizona sherriff obtaine the tents for his jail overcrowding.

Just some thoughts.
 
A lot of criminals file of the serial number of a gun, which would make tracing it back to the gun store all but impossible.
 
Funny that you say that.

Applying acid to the area on the firearm where the serial number was stamped tends to bring out the serial number in relief since the metal under the stamping is denser and resists getting eaten away by the acid. This is a common investigatory technique for dealing with filed off serial numbers. A serial number is successfully obliterated only if the grinding is especially deep or if the part where the number was stamped is totally milled out.
 
The 1% is, I suspect, a simple consequence of statistics: Some dealers just flat out sell a lot of guns. Most dealers are running small operations. And, of course, if you're a dealer in a high crime state, the odds of some of the guns you sell ending up in the hands of criminals are going to be higher for just that reason.

So a major dealer who's doing business in a high crime state can end up with more of their guns owned by criminals than a hundred mom and pop operations in a low crime state, in perfect innocence.
 
Remember that distributors are dealers as well, and a large number of people who have FFLs don't sell much of anything.

There are 108,381 dealers, according to the BATFE. So, is it hard to believe that about 1,100 of them are the high volume guys? You can make stats appear as ominous as you want. Think about this one:

In the company you work for, the President wants to crack down on sick leave abuse. Many workers are calling in sick to extend their week ends, and this must stop. Astonishingly, nearly 40% of all sick days are taken on either a Monday or a Friday. Therefore, the company President has announced a cut of employee paid sick leave from 8 days a year to 6.

See how misleading stats can be?

ETA:

The actual stat that the anti's are using is that "Of all the guns traced by BATFE in connection with criminal investigations, most of them came from just 1% of licensed dealers."

You can read all about how this statement is misleading here.
 
Illegal Guns

Divemedic,
Great article! Thanks! Really shows that the statistics Brady uses are misleading.

But let me ask about illegal gun trafficing. I watched a show the other night called Gangland. It traced the history of the gangs and then said that at first it was just fists and knives and then when the drug money came in they switched to guns. Now they get lots of guns. How do they get them in such large numbers and why can't the BATFE stop them?

It seems from reading the political arguments of the gun vs antigun positions that we in the gun world say: "Enforce existing laws" which seem to presume that LE is not doing their job and the antigunners say: "Help LE get these guns off the street by passing more laws giving them the tools to do it". Recapping it seems we say "LE is not doing it's job, make them do it" and the antigunners say: "LE wants to but needs more laws to help them do it". Is that an accurate depiction to you?
 
Last edited:
That appears to be the argument, but I think that there are a lot more variables there. The first of these is also to most obvious: the impossible position of wanting to keep criminals (gangs) from buying an otherwise legal product (guns)for which they are using funds obtained through selling an illegal product (drugs).

The ludicrous position that you can stop a person from obtaining a legal product when that same person makes his living by selling a product that is illegal shows that there is no way to stop this, not even prohibiting ALL firearms.

Gangs buy their guns, and the ATF can't stop them for the same reason that the DEA cannot stop the sale of street drugs: As long as there are people willing to pay for a good, that good will be sold. Making the good illegal does nothing but raise the price by manipulating supply/demand.

People, even law enforcement and lawmakers, never seem to understand basic economic principles.

The easiest way to stop gangs from having unlimited access to guns is to take away their unlimited access to funding. They way to do that is to legalize drugs, and allow market forces to make them so readily available that there is not enough profit there to fund the gangs. (History proves this, as the violence of prohibition waned as soon as those laws were repealed.) For numerous reasons, legalization of drugs will never happen. Chief among those reasons is that public sentiment, formed by years of government "just say no" and "drugs are bad" propaganda, is against it. LEOs are largely opposed to it as well, because such an action would cut deeply into funding and the fedgov gravy train.

The lessons that we learned during prohibition have been forgotten.
 
I know the owner of highest volume dealer in my state. He probably sells more handguns than all the other dealers in the state combined. Guess what, he's on that list of "problem" dealers. Is it because he and his staff are doing anything wrong? Nope. It's simply numbers. The more guns you sell, the larger the percentage of guns in the state that came from your shop. Therefore, the larger the percentage of the guns that wind up in the hands of criminals came from your shop.

The whole Handgun Control, Inc. effort to blackball dealers is a sham, like the rest of gun control.

Oh, btw, all the guns "traced" back to his shop were sold to legal gun owners. They changed hands one or more times before finding their way into the hands of a criminal (typically via theft).
 
Last edited:
It seems from reading the political arguments of the gun vs antigun positions that we in the gun world say: "Enforce existing laws" which seem to presume that LE is not doing their job ...
Click to expand...

That depends on what LE's job is.

I understand that the act of a felon attempting to purchase from as FFL is rarely prosecuted.
 
No such thing as an "Illegal Gun."

Only illegal gun owners. An arbitrary and subjective distinction.

BATFE, FBI, LEOs, other dotgov and dotmil folks can use any gun they want. So, let's use the correct language and remember that only the blessed few are allowed to touch the sacred big boomsticks, and that those pigs are just a bit more equal than we pigs.
 
All of the statistics the BATF uses are Manure.

There is no such thing as a Crime Gun or an Illegal gun. Is there such a thing as an illegal automobile, or a crime car? After all cars kill more people than guns do, about 5 times more each year. Half involve an intoxicated person who is driving the car. Thats who commits the crime, thats the illegal entity.

The Gun doesnt commit the crime. THE CRIMINAL COMMITS THE CRIME.


95% of violent crimes are committed by habitual repeat offenders. That is where the problem lies. The last 11 murders in my hometown were committed by a repeat violent criminal offender, as the police chief in our town pointed out , the 11 victims, and the 5 perpetrators caught by the police had over 600 felony offenses between them. Armed robbery, Murder, criminal hommicide, assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated assault, drug dealing, etc are the typical offenses.

The last 6 police officers killed in the line of Duty in Philadelphia, were killed by violent repeat offenders who were out on Parole, Probation or on Bail and parole. The courts set them out on the street knowing they will commit another crime the minute they hit the street.

The problem isnt the guns its the criminals.

Almost all guns used in crimes start out being legally manufactured and legally sold. Some are stollen and some are straw purchases.
 
The ludicrous position that you can stop a person from obtaining a legal product when that same person makes his living by selling a product that is illegal shows that there is no way to stop this, not even prohibiting ALL firearms.
Click to expand...

Well I agree with some of what you are saying. I am not however ready to endorse legalizing drugs but that is not what I am asking about.

However, as far as guns go they pretty much all start out as legal but then are possessed or obtained illegally. The antigunners say that people come into gun stores and buy large amount of guns in straw purchases and then go onto the streets and sell them to those for whom it is illegal to possess firearms.

Couldn't tracing these guns if they are used in crimes then lead LE to discover who these trafficers are? Is that the way these sales are really happening or is it just antigun propaganda?
 
Last edited:
They use the concept of "illegal guns" as a fictional enemy. If you have an imaginary enemy with made up characteristics, any means of eradicating said enemy will seem appropriate and results can be conjured on a whim. If a problem arises, it makes the perfect scapegoat.
 
A fascinating book I read was called Gangleader for a day.

It was the story of a sociology student who spent several years studying a crack gang in Chicago that he had encountered while trying to study low income african american communities.

Sadly, it was bereft on information concerning the illegal gun trade, but it did have some interesting tidbits. First of all was the fact that the leader of the gang never carried weapons, he considered it too risky, he depended on his guards and footsoldiers to protect him. Average gangmembers had to ask permission to carry, and were issued the guns by the security head of the gang. They weren't allowed to buy thier own weapons, and they weren't allowed to carry while making or selling drugs.

There was only one man in the entire story who managed to stand up to the gang in any form, and that man owned a store. The gang wanted "protection money" out of him. He had a rifle on the wall, and paid two homeless men to watch his building for him. They never managed to get the money out of him, and were even forced to reign in their younger members from terrorizing his store.

The real fascinating parts came from the tenets of the projects that the gang operated in. Of course, the gang ran tight relationships with the supervisor, to ensure that the tenets weren't armed. The super was on the take from all the tenets, turning a blind eye to any scams, crimes, or black market businesses. The tenets were lying about their income, because if they made too much money they'd get kicked out of their apartments. The men stayed away from the apartments, for that exact reason. The only men who could stick around were the unemployed, the gangmembers, or the retired. Men with jobs had to hide the money they made, otherwise they could get kicked out or have their rents raised.The women faced the same situation too. The super used the gang for grunt work(Like fixing up the place, repairs, etc). Even the homeless were charged an under the table rent just for the opportunity to sleep in the stairwells.

Basically, everyone was stuck lying about thier income. Otherwise their rents would go up, or they'd be forced out on the street. The only way they could make more money was side jobs. (Everything from selling candy to selling drugs to prostitution) Since they were already doing all this illegal moneymaking and hiding, they couldn't go to the police for anything. So they had to go through the gang or the crooked supervisor (Who would in turn bill them for the service) for any kind of justice or recompense. It was a dirty vicious cycle brought upon by the very socialist welfare system that had been put in place to 'help' them in the first place.
 
Couldn't tracing these guns if they are used in crimes then lead LE to discover who these trafficers are?
Click to expand...

No, because there is no way to prove that the weapon was straw purchase. Just because a weapon was used to commit a crime does not mean that the original owner was a criminal. The only thing a trace does is tell the agent who the original purchaser was. Since there are many other ways for a firearm to leave the possession of the original purchaser, there is no way to secure a conviction.

Unless you are advocating making ftf sales illegal, universal registration,. or some other scheme, you are barking up the wrong tree. As I am sure you know, these schemes don't work either, and are the antithesis of a free people.
 
Keep in mind the 'end game' of the legal system is to show

a large number of convictions. Crooks are very seldom convicted of one crime but multiple ones... looks better if you are a DA. A gun becomes illegal when it is used in a crime or confiscated.... the numbers are just that numbers....

Here's an example...

In my state (I'm sure yours too) it is illegal to rob someone...

also, it is illegal to kill someone during a robbery...

illegal to use a gun during a robbery....

but, it is also illegal (totally different law in S.C.) to Kill someone during a robbery if your are going to or coming from fishing or hunting.

Why? it is legal to carry a pistol while going to or coming from 'legal' hunting or fishing. So, some lame brained pollitico had to make a whole new law to point out to sportman they could not rob and kill someone if they were legally carrying?
 
There are a few "illegal guns" in the hands of American criminals. I don't know what else you would call select-fire AKs smuggled in from South America.
 
There are a few "illegal guns" in the hands of American criminals. I don't know what else you would call select-fire AKs smuggled in from South America.
Click to expand...

That same "illegal gun", when in the hands of an Army Rangers special ops unit or DEA strike force returning back from South America, is not illegal. It's a piece of equipment used while under cover or out in the field, that is more readily resupplied by battlefield pick-ups than an M4.

The gun isn't illegal... possession of it by American citizens is illegal.
 
How do they get them in such large numbers and why can't the BATFE stop them?
Click to expand...
Have you ever looked at what gets smuugled across from Mexico? They have multiple mile tunnels with light rail moving drugs and anything else profitable in some cases.

+1 divemedic on legalizing drugs
even more importantly drug related crime will drop. When marijuana is as cheap as cigarettes who is going to steal for it? Not many.
And dealer won't have anything to protect. When was the last time you heard of one convenience store owner shooting another convenience store owner b/c he opened up shop in his neighborhood or was taking customers away? Take out the profit and you take out the crime (except probably driving high).

-1 divemedic on not being able to get buyer with a trace. There was a gun store in Columbus that got into trouble a few years ago. They are one of the bigger stores in Columbus so I imagine they are in that 1% volume, but they were selling like 5% of the guns in NY street crime. These guns were only being bought by a few dozen people. They were more than able to get those people for the straw buys, and the Gun shop had to have an ATFE guy look over all their sales or something (I think he was in store a lot).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top