Americans in the Crosshairs

America’s urban centers are devastated by violence committed with illegal guns.
Parents and teens display signs of post-traumatic stress disorder, elementary and middle school students plan their own funerals, and families celebrate when children survive into their 20s.

On an average day in the U.S., guns are used to kill more than 80 people, injure almost 300 more, and commit approximately 3,000 crimes. Since 1963, more Americans have been shot and killed on our own soil than in all the 20th-century wars combined.

In the past several years, gun violence has increased in many cities, particularly those with populations of less than one million. According to the Police Executive Research Forum, this spike in violent crime is primarily due to easy access to guns by criminals and young people.

Columbine High School shooting, Littleton, Colorado, April 20, 1999

The "Iron Pipeline"

It’s no accident that our streets are awash in guns. They’re being pumped in through an “Iron Pipeline”—a highly efficient, organized, and profitable business of gun trafficking that moves guns from legal manufacture to dealers to criminals and young people who can’t buy guns legally. Over 80% of guns recovered in crime are obtained by perpetrators illegally. We can prevent criminals and juveniles from accessing guns if we shift attention and resources to the point guns enter the illegal pipeline and cut off the flow of guns to criminals at the source.

Where do crime guns come from?

Virtually every gun starts out as a legally manufactured product.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)
points to three common ways guns move from legal distribution
channels to the criminal market:

Corrupt federally licensed gun dealers

Virtually every gun starts out as a legally manufactured
product. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives (ATF) points to three common ways
guns move from legal distribution channels to the
criminal market:

Case in Point: Kahr Arms of Worcester, MA
lost 15 shipments of firearms between 1998-99,
hired people with criminal histories to work inside
its plant, and refused to install metal detectors.
Kahr Arms guns have repeatedly turned up in
Massachusetts gun assaults and homicides.

Other practices associated with corrupt dealers include:
obliterating serial numbers; having a high number of
crime gun traces within a short period; and selling multiple
handguns to the same buyer repeatedly over the course
of weeks, months, and sometimes years. Dealers have
also been caught knowingly selling guns to felons.

Case in Point: One sting operation in Michigan captured a dealer on videotape admitting that what he was about to do—sell a gun to a straw purchaser—was “highly illegal.” He sold the gun anyway.

Straw purchasing

Straw purchasing is the most common way criminals get guns, accounting for almost 50% of trafficking investigations. A straw purchaser is someone with a clean record who buys guns on behalf of someone legally prohibited from possessing guns. Straw purchasers are usually people hired by trafficking rings, or friends, relatives, spouses or girlfriends of prohibited purchasers.

Case in Point: The two Columbine High School shooters recruited friends to buy guns for them at Colorado gun shows. One of the buyers admitted she would not have bought the guns if she had been required to submit to a background check.

Gun Shows and private gun sales

Gun shows have been called “Tupperware parties for criminals” because they attract large numbers of prohibited buyers. A loophole in federal law allows unlicensed or “private” sellers, many of whom work out of gun shows, to lawfully sell or transfer guns without conducting a criminal background check. According to former ATF spokesman Tom Mangan, in many cases, it’s simply a “cash and carry” transaction. Gun show dealers have been known to advertise to criminals with signs that read “no background checks required here.”

Case in Point: Charles Brown sold over one hundred semiautomatic pistols to felon James Bostic and his accomplices at a series of Ohio gun shows. The guns have been traced to dozens of shootings in New York.

Gun Policy at the Federal Level

Congress has passed a series of laws in recent years that allow easy access to guns and restrict law enforcement’s ability to go after traffickers. The number of federal gun cases brought against corrupt gun dealers has declined 25% since the Clinton administration. Three policies in particular impede law enforcement’s ability to prosecute traffickers.

Keeping crime gun trace information secret

Until 2002, the ATF released aggregate crime gun trace reports to local police departments, researchers, policymakers and public safety advocates. The reports revolutionized our understanding of where crime guns come from. They revealed for the first time that 1.2% of federally licensed gun dealers supply 57% of the guns used in crime. Bowing to pressure from the gun lobby, Congress voted to restrict police access to crime gun trace data and cut off public access altogether. These restrictions, known as the Tiahrt Amendments (named for the Kansas Congressman who sponsored the bill), have passed in every Department of Justice budget since 2003, despite the fact that prominent law enforcement associations oppose them as a serious threat to public safety.

Handcuffing the ATF

The ATF, the sole government agency charged with enforcing federal gun laws, operates with just 1,800 agents to monitor approximately 77,000 gun dealers. Given these constraints, it would take ATF 22 years to inspect all federally licensed gun dealers. Even if the ATF had the manpower to inspect most gun dealers, federal law limits the agency to a single unannounced inspection of a dealer in any 12-month period. Congress has made it increasingly difficult for the ATF to revoke licenses of crooked gun dealers.

Case in Point: Valley Guns, owned by NRA Board member Sandy Abrams, was one of the leading suppliers of crime guns in Baltimore. Valley Guns’ firearms have been traced to at least 11 murders, 41 assaults, 49 drug offenses, and over 100 cases of illegal possession. Ten years and 900 federal violations later, Valley Guns was finally ordered to close its doors in 2006, but not before the Bush administration fought to allow Abrams to continue selling guns as a private dealer.

An absence of records

It is impossible for law enforcement to know the whereabouts of millions of firearms in circulation today. Federal law explicitly bars the ATF from establishing a database of retail firearms sales, and private gun sellers are not required to keep a paper trail of transactions. Prior to 2001, federal authorities maintained criminal background check records for up to six months, which allowed the FBI to initiate 235 “firearm-retrieval actions.” Former Attorney General, John Ashcroft, reversed this policy and ordered the destruction of all criminal background check records within 24 hours. Even though the General Accounting Office found that destroying these records endangers public safety, the policy remains in effect.

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