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New York Times

Guns and the Border

Published: January 15, 2011

In December, the Obama administration signaled a welcome new resolve to block the torrent of illegal guns moving into Mexico and the hands of the drug cartels.

Related

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced it was seeking emergency authority to require 8,000 gun dealers near the border to report multiple purchases by any individual of high-firepower semiautomatic rifles that use a detachable magazine.

The bureau asked the Office of Management and Budget, which must sign off on the plan, to do so by Jan. 5. That date has come and gone without a decision.

The death toll in Mexico's drug wars is staggering — more than 30,000 people killed as of last year. The role of American-purchased guns in that carnage is also undeniable. In the past four years, more than 60,000 guns connected to crimes in Mexico have been tracked back to American gun dealers. About three-quarters of those weapons originated from gun shops in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California, the four states covered by the A.T.F. plan.

Administration officials insist that approval will be coming soon, and we hope that is the case. But the delay is worrying. (Before the A.T.F. spoke up, the idea had languished at the Justice Department for months.)

The gun lobby and some vocal allies on Capitol Hill have denounced the proposal, claiming that this reasonable effort to track down gun traffickers threatens Americans' gun rights and exceeds the A.T.F.'s mandate. The bureau's authority to demand information from a limited group of dealers shown to present elevated risks of crime has been upheld by courts in other cases.

The budget office needs to approve the A.T.F. initiative. And the White House needs to press Congress to provide the bureau with funding for more inspectors, as well as more authority to identify and shut down see-no-evil gun dealers. Not just at the border, but everywhere.

A version of this editorial appeared in print on January 16, 2011, on page WK9 of the New York edition.

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THE WASHINGTON POST SPENT ONE YEAR INVESTIGATING THE HIDDEN TURTHS ABOUT GUN SALES IN THE US- THIS IS ONE OF THE REPORTS

By James V. Grimaldi and Sari Horwitz

Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, October 24, 2010; 6:00 AM

Under the law, investigators cannot reveal federal firearms tracing information that shows how often a dealer sells guns that end up seized in crimes. The law effectively shields retailers from lawsuits, academic study and public scrutiny. It also keeps the spotlight off the relationship between rogue gun dealers and the black market in firearms.

Such information used to be available under a simple Freedom of Information Act request. But seven years ago, under pressure from the gun lobby, Congress blacked out the information by passing the so-called Tiahrt amendment, named for Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.). The law removed from the public record a government database that traces guns recovered in crimes back to the dealers.

"It was extraordinary, and the most offensive thing you can think of," said Chuck Wexler, director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit group for police chiefs. "The tracing data, which is now secret, helped us see the big picture of where guns are coming from."

The amendment also kept the data from being used by cities and interest groups to sue the firearms industry, an avenue of attack modeled after the lawsuits against tobacco companies. "They were trying to drive a stake through the heart of the [gun] industry," said Lawrence Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group for firearms dealers and makers. "It took an act of Congress to stop the litigation."

To break through the federal secrecy imposed by the Tiahrt amendment, The Post obtained hundreds of thousands of state and local police records and did its own tracing and analysis. To develop Maryland statistics, The Post took records of handgun sales from a state database and cross-referenced them against lists of gun serial numbers from police evidence logs in the District and Prince George's County. For Virginia, The Post gathered records of gun traces from a State Police database.

The National Rifle Association and other gun rights activists say releasing the tracing data unfairly tainted honest businesses by demonizing legal gun sales. Tiahrt and defenders of his amendment say it was backed by a national police union and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which wanted the database to be kept secret to protect undercover officers.

But Bradley A. Buckles, ATF director at the time, said his agency did not ask for the amendment. "It just showed up," he said. "I always assumed the NRA did it."

The NRA said the amendment protects gun owners and manufacturers. The data were being "used to push a political agenda," said Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action. "None of these individual dealers or companies was going to be able to withstand the avalanche of lawsuits and being held literally responsible for crime."

The proposal surprised some members of the House Appropriations Committee when it came up for a vote in July 2003. As a result, it barely passed, 31-30, though the committee was full of NRA supporters such as Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), who voted no because he was troubled at being "caught flat-footed and blindsided."

After the vote, Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) objected. "It was not the subject of hearings. It has no support from law enforcement. It has no support from Attorney General [John] Ashcroft. It really serves to protect only the most corrupt gun dealers at the expense of all other legitimate gun dealers."

Tracing began after the Gun Control Act of 1968, which requires licensed dealers to collect certain information when a firearm is sold. A buyer must affirm that he or she is at least 21 and not a felon, a fugitive, an illegal immigrant or mentally ill. Dealers must list the information on Form 4473, with the firearm's serial numbers, to allow police to trace guns.

For three decades, tracing was used mostly to help police catch criminals linked to recovered guns. But in 1995, Professor Glenn L. Pierce of Northeastern University analyzed ATF tracing data and discovered that a tiny fraction of gun dealers - 1 percent - were the original sellers of a majority of the guns seized at crime scenes - 57 percent.

Pierce's analysis "blew everybody away" at the ATF, recalled Joseph R. Vince Jr., then deputy chief of the firearms division. Law enforcement might be able to reduce crime by focusing on a relative handful of gun dealers.

The Clinton administration seized on the findings to encourage police to request a trace on every gun they confiscated. In 2000, Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, who oversaw the ATF, announced "intensive inspections" of the 1 percent - 1,012 gun stores.

The inspections detected serious problems. Nearly half of the dealers could not account for all of their guns, for a total of 13,271 missing firearms. More than half were out of compliance with record-keeping. And they had made nearly 700 sales to potential traffickers or prohibited people. More than 450 dealers were sanctioned, and 20 were referred for license revocation.

The ATF proposed tougher rules, such as requiring dealers to conduct regular inventories to detect lost or stolen guns. The gun industry opposed the rule, calling it a step toward a national registry of gun ownership.

Lawmakers and groups such as the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence used the tracing data to identify the top 10 "bad apple" gun dealers. That angered gun store owners and manufacturers, who argued that selling traced guns does not prove wrongdoing.

The industry turned its anger into action.

For years, the ATF had been releasing tracing data that was at least a year old. A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit pushed for contemporaneous data, but the ATF balked because it felt that the release of real-time trace data could threaten investigations. The standoff landed in the Supreme Court.

In February 2003, before oral arguments, the NRA persuaded Rep. George R. Nethercutt (R-Wash.) to add a provision codifying the time delay into a 544-page omnibus spending bill. In a dramatic move, the high court canceled arguments. The case eventually was tossed out.

Next, the gun lobby moved to take the trace data out of public circulation altogether. In July 2003, Tiahrt introduced his amendment, saying, "I wanted to make sure I was fulfilling the needs of my friends who are firearms dealers."

Tiahrt - who lost in this year's Republican Senate primary - said he also was lobbied by the Fraternal Order of Police. "They believed it would allow criminals to track down who undercover officers were," Tiahrt said. But FOP Executive Director James Pasco Jr. said the union played no role in drafting the amendment. "We were not there before the fact," he said. "We were supportive after the fact."

An appeals court in Chicago ridiculed the undercover argument, saying it was one of several "far-fetched hypothetical scenarios" offered to oppose releasing the data. Although the FOP supported the Tiahrt amendment, police chiefs across the country have opposed it as an impediment to local law enforcement.

In 2007, mayors led by New York's Michael R. Bloomberg attacked the amendment, saying it shielded dealers who broke the law. Armed with trace information from before the ban, New York filed civil suits against more than two dozen dealers in Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia. The city hired investigators to do undercover stings for illegal gun sales. Twenty-one dealers accepted court monitoring of their businesses.

Tiahrt and the NRA said the lawsuits compromised 18 ATF investigations. However, ATF associate chief counsel Barry Orlow said none was compromised.

During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama promised to repeal the Tiahrt restrictions on local police access to national trace data. When the administration passed its budget last year, it expanded police access but also tightened restrictions on public disclosure.

Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.

© 2010 The Washington Post Company

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Sorry, but this article has a definite slant and lacks the hard numbers of the Stratfor report. Both the NYT and WP have a definite bias when it comes to their reporting about fireharms. Stratfor simply showed that the simplistic reporting of the 90 percent figure is false.

These guys are getting guns from all over. And they sure aren't buying grenades and explosives in the U.S.

If this represents a year's worth of research it sure doesn't say much for the investigative ability of the authors.

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I would think that Grimaldi of the Washington Post, who has won a Pulitzer Prize, is somewhat more indicative of the quality of the journalism put out by the Washington Post than the news of the Borderland Beat that publishes stories from "unconfirmed and unverified" sources.,

Here is a read from NPR, a well respected source of news information:

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/05/132652351/tracking-gun-dealers-linked-to-mexican-violence

I went to college in Texas with a guy who ended up becoming a Texas Ranger and he is a gun advocate. I visited with him a few months ago about Mexico, its problems, drugs, and guns. He found it laughable that anyone would think that the flow of guns from Texas to Mexico was not the major source of guns to the cartels. In the NPR article it is mentioned that 8 of the top 12 US gun dealers that have had guns traced to them to murders in Mexico have been from Texas.

Is the NRA a "Gun Lobby"?? Well they spend about $5,000,000 USD a year buying Congress.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/leaders-cringe-under-barrage-of-nra-money-and-aggression/2007/04/18/1176696914647.html

They are routinely in the top 5 lobbyist groups in terms of money spent for the last 20 years. Consider the competition of about 13,000 lobbyists registered in DC. Also do not forget that they are not the only "Gun Lobby." The ATF is politically paralyzed to do their job due to fear of political retribution from the NRA.

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I would think that Grimaldi of the Washington Post, who has won a Pulitzer Price, is somewhat more indicative of the quality of the journalism put out by the Washington Post than the news of the Borderland Beat that publishes stories from "unconfirmed and unverified" sources.,

Not sure what you are talking about. This thread is not about something that Borderland Beat authored.

If you go back to the first post by MaineCoons - you will see the thread is actually about a report published by Stratfor - http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110209-mexicos-gun-supply-and-90-percent-myth Borderland Beat mentioned the report - and surely you are not saying that the Stratfor report is worthless because it was mentioned on Borderland Beat.

You might take a look at the report that is the subject of this thread - looks to me like they did a good job with the numbers. And the numbers were provided by the US Government.

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Money and drugs go in and out of Mexico as well as automatic weapons and grenades which are not sold in the US. Mexico would like to blame the US for much of its woes instead of placing the blame where it goes on its own people. Fully auto weapons are highly regulated in the US and grenades are not sold but nobody wants to go there as it tears apart the argument that the US shoulders a majority of the blame. Face it, Mexico's borders are porous and if grenades, money and drugs flow through probably do most guns!

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Not sure what you are talking about. This thread is not about something that Borderland Beat authored.

If you go back to the first post by MaineCoons - you will see the thread is actually about a report published by Stratfor - http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20110209-mexicos-gun-supply-and-90-percent-myth Borderland Beat mentioned the report - and surely you are not saying that the Stratfor report is worthless because it was mentioned on Borderland Beat.

You might take a look at the report that is the subject of this thread - looks to me like they did a good job with the numbers. And the numbers were provided by the US Government.

I've read the "subject of this thread" > From Stratfor and quoted on Borderland Beat this morning, where the Narcos are getting their guns:

Yes I agree that the US politicians should have said "87% of the 4000 traceable weapons were bought in the US. But some US congressmen did not include the word "traceable". The statistical sample was 4000 guns because only 4000 guns of the 30,000 total were deemed traceable by the ATF.

The US Congress and the ATF are paralyzed by the lobbying efforts of the NRA and other related gun lobbies to do their job effectively. Until someone can show me data that the guns seized in Mexico can be traced to countries other than the US, I think the info at hand strongly suggests that the US has been the major supplier of weapons to the cartels.

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How about giving a little blame to the Mexico military, United States government supplies to the Mexico Military with all types of supplies from Hummer's to bandages to guns to hand grenades. I am sure there are some military personal (even some defectors) and probably some political people on the take with the cartels.

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Sorry, but this article has a definite slant and lacks the hard numbers of the Stratfor report. Both the NYT and WP have a definite bias when it comes to their reporting about fireharms. Stratfor simply showed that the simplistic reporting of the 90 percent figure is false.

These guys are getting guns from all over. And they sure aren't buying grenades and explosives in the U.S.

If this represents a year's worth of research it sure doesn't say much for the investigative ability of the authors.

Much of the article (such as Tihart Amendment) is factual, even if a slant exists.

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