The Business of Guns

needed to ensure that every last one of them operates legally for every purchase. The solution may not be broad laws meant to apply to all licensed dealers, but rather specific regulations and investigations meant to address those with the highest risk of illegal sales. ATF firearm tracing data reveal that just a small percentage of licensed dealers account for the majority of gun crimes, with about 50 percent of all guns able to be traced to fewer than 1 percent of all dealers. By concentrating regulation upon this smaller population, law enforcement becomes much more efficient. A series of ATF investigations in 2000 focused solely on dealers who had been traced to 10 or more gun crimes in the previous calendar year. By ignoring those who had been associated with fewer crimes, the ATF managed to identify tens of thousands of missing guns as well as hundreds of potential traffickers. However, the ATF’s same data have yet to conclude that aggressive policing of high-risk dealers would lead to lower overall rates of illegal sales or fewer crimes committed with guns. While stricter policing, higher costs, or more rigorous attention to legal details associated with federal licensing provides a possible solution, it also runs the risk of increasing purchases on the black market, where an exchange is more likely to not be recorded, and therefore more likely to complicate or obfuscate future legal investigations. Additionally, taking licenses away from dealers who operate outside the law does not mean eliminating their illegal guns. Research on the licensing reforms of the 1990s revealed that those who did not renew their license (so called “dropout dealers”) were more likely to sell guns to criminals than those who kept their license. The Oakland Police Department aggressively cracked down on gun licenses in 1997, requiring all dealers to pass

Chapter 5: Stopping Illegal Sales

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