[Vision2020] Published Eyewitness Study: Criminals Buy Guns From Unregulated Gun Shows

Ted Moffett starbliss at gmail.com
Sat Jul 28 16:30:26 PDT 2007


All-

Dan wrote:


> I think we can also agree that we have plenty of laws on the books; they
> just need to be more rigorously enforced.  More laws just muddies the
> waters.
>
> DC


Apparently there is serious disagreement, from Professor Garen J. Wintemute,
a scholar who has authored more than 50 published papers on gun violence and
prevention, who was selected one of 1997 Time Magazine's 15 international
"heroes of medicine," with the statement that "we have plenty of laws on the
books" regarding firearm regulation, especially regulation of gun shows.

Read info below at the web link about the study, with eyewitness
observations, of gun show sales in various states, comparing the nature of
the sales in states without strict gun show regulations, to those in
California, given California's more strict regulations.  A law enforcement
officer present at a gun show commented that gun sales that Wintemute had
witnessed from unlicensed vendors to individuals who were not even asked for
ID, will result in the guns being "sold on the street."

http://www.physorg.com/news100839164.html

Excerpts below from web site above:

"It's real shoe-leather epidemiology," added Teret, who has co-authored
papers with Wintemute on the public health impacts of gun violence. "Now for
the first time the public policy discussion on gun shows can be based on
data rather than speculation."

The study, titled "Gun shows across a multistate American gun market:
observational evidence of the effects of regulatory policies," was funded by
the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation and the Broad Foundation of Los Angeles
and was approved by the UC Davis Institutional Review Board. It is based on
observations Wintemute made while visiting 28 gun shows — eight each in
California and Nevada, six in Arizona, four in Texas and two in Florida —
between April 2005 and March 2006. California was chosen because it tightly
regulates gun shows — requiring for example that gun show promoters be
licensed — while the other four states don't regulate gun shows at all. The
four states were chosen because they are the leading sources of guns used in
crimes in California.
------------------------------

 The potential for gun shows to serve as places where criminals obtain
firearms can be curbed through increased regulation without adversely
affecting attendance or business, according to a pioneering study published
this week in *Injury Prevention*, an international peer-reviewed journal for
health professionals.
 <http://physorg.tradepub.com/?pt=cat&page=_INTL>
The study, based on field observations made by Garen J. Wintemute, director
of UC Davis' Violence Prevention Research Program, also found that
undocumented gun sales between private parties and illegal "straw purchases"
in which a person with a clean record buys a weapon for someone with a
criminal record were much more common at gun shows in states with little
regulation.

The take-home message of the study, which compared gun shows in California,
where they are tightly regulated, with gun shows in states with little
government oversight, is that "regulation works," Wintemute said.

Wintemute, a 55-year-old professor of emergency medicine at the UC Davis
School of Medicine, is a leading researcher in the field of injury
epidemiology and the prevention of firearm violence. Selected in 1997 by
Time magazine as one of 15 international "heroes of medicine," Wintemute is
the author of over 50 published scientific articles on gun violence and
prevention.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wintemute witnessed no private party gun sales between attendees at shows in
California and just two involving an apparently unlicensed gun vendor. In
contrast, the number of private party sales at shows in the four other
states "appeared about equal in number to sales involving licensed
retailers."

Private party sales, at least the ones observed by Wintemute, tended to be
brief, "don't ask, don't tell" transactions. "They generally required less
than five minutes to complete and sometimes less than one minute," Wintemute
wrote in the report. "In only one sale between attendees was identification
or verification of in-state residence requested. It was uncommon in sales
involving an unlicensed vendor."

Some of the private party sales Wintemute saw appeared to involve firearms
likely to end up in criminal hands. At a gun show in Phoenix in September
2005, for example, he witnessed four young men buying eight handguns over
the course of a day — including two Glock pistols from an unlicensed vendor
who did not request any identification or verify in-state residence status.
As the young men left the show, Wintemute overheard a gang unit officer from
the Phoenix police department who was present at the gun show comment:
"They'll just take 'em out on the street and sell 'em."

Among the many other observations included in Wintemute's report: Only 30
percent of gun vendors, both at shows in California and in the other states,
were identifiable as licensed retailers; armed attendees were five times as
common in the comparison states; and at one show in Nevada, one third of the
cars in the parking lot had California plates — an indication, Wintemute
said, that California residents travel to out-of-state gun shows to obtain
firearms.".
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another surprise was the straw purchases. Wintemute thought they would be
uncommon no matter the location of the gun show because federal law bans
straw purchases nationwide. Instead, he reported seeing "24 definite and
three probable straw purchases" in the four comparison states, and "one
straw purchase and one probable straw purchase" in California.

Some were fairly blatant. On three occasions, all outside California, he
observed straw purchasers buying multiple guns in a single transaction. He
even saw a licensed retailer at a gun show in Florida processing multiple
straw purchases simultaneously.

Also in Florida, Wintemute saw a woman in her twenties buying a rifle with a
bayonet and 30-round magazine from a licensed retailer while her male
partner, who had selected the firearm, stood 15 feet away while she
completed the paperwork. As the background check was being run on her, the
man talked with the retailer about the rifle and then bought ammunition for
it once the background check had been completed.
------------------------------------------------------------
Link below to website that references the Wintemute article and offers more
information on the firearm regulation discussion:

http://www.gunguys.com/?p=2230

>From website above:

So what's the gun lobby's answer to information like this? Whenever
regulation of these gun shows is suggested, the gun lobby blows it off, and
claims [2] it will "inconvenience law-abiding gun
owners"<http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/24056>more than stop any
criminals from buying weapons.

Gun-show promoter Bert Guy, who stages events in Arizona and Nevada, said in
an earlier interview that Wintemute's fears are exaggerated.

Most sellers at gun shows, he said, are licensed and conduct background
checks on prospective customers, adhering to federal law. Adding regulations
at gun shows, he said, will only punish law-abiding citizens.

"Do you think these laws are really going to do anything to slow (criminals)
down?" Guy asked.

Um, actually– yes. They will.

"Gun shows can be regulated so as to diminish their importance as sources of
crime guns without greatly diminishing attendance or commercial activity,"
he said.

The bottom line, according to Wintemute: "Regulation works."

It's as simple as that. If laws were useless, we wouldn't regulate the act
or murder or theft. But the fact is that criminals commit crimes based not
on some inner moral instinct that makes them different from the NRA's
mythical "law-abiding gun owners." No, criminals commit crimes based on the
opportunity they get to do so. If criminals have a loophole to buy guns at
gun shows, they'll do so. If we close that loophole, they won't be able to
buy guns at gun shows. It's as simple as that.

As for the "inconvenience" of taking two minutes to fill out a piece of
paperwork, it's nonexistent. Any responsible gun owner should be more than
happy to fill out the paperwork, especially if it means (and it does) that
his own community will be safer because of it. In the end, if we don't
require background checks at gun shows, [3] just who are we making things
easier for<http://www.californiaprogressreport.com/2007/06/unregulated_gun.html>?
It's not the "law-abiding gun owner." It's the criminal.

But gun show regulation somehow hurts the "law abiding"? While no law ever
stands in the way of America's brilliant criminal class?? The truth is that
laws which help us sort out the criminals from the law abiding (through
background checks) also keep firearms out of the hands of the latter. Who
would oppose that?

Unlicensed gun dealers. Unscrupulous gun manufacturers. Second Amendment
extremists?

At its heart, the argument against background checks at gun shows is a
financial one, driven by gun dealers and the gun lobby. With background
checks, gun dealers can't sell as many guns, because criminals can't buy
guns from them. They're putting their own profits ahead of our safety. And
while the gun lobby is more than content to let them do so (because they are
funded by the gun industry that in turn funds them), we are not. Every gun
sale, everywhere, should require a background check. If we're going to start
closing loopholes, let's start with the biggest one, and close the gun show
loophole for good.
-------------------------------------------
Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett
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