Georgia guns plague nation's streets

[marmar]

By Rhonda Cook
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution


For the second year in a row, guns sold in Georgia were recovered at more crime scenes outside its borders than any other state, according to a report issued by the anti-gun group the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

This report was only the second one the Washington-based group has issued using “trace” data compiled by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Both times Georgia was No. 1.

“More crime guns are traced back to Georgia than any other state,” Daniel Vice, senior attorney at the Brady Center, told WSB radio.

“Georgia’s weak gun laws are a gun trafficker’s best friend,” Vice told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

At the same time, gun rights advocates say the information from ATF is misleading and used only to support criticism of Georgia’s relatively liberal gun laws. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-guns-still-showing-548840.html

[hack89]

1. So?

with violent crime rates at historic lows and steadily declining why is this significant? I could understand the concern if lax gun laws were contributing to an increase in gun crime but that isn't the case.

[aikoaiko]

2. FU Daniel Vice of the Brady Center.

The gun laws (Federal and State) that govern Georgia's gun sales are as strong as most states.

As a Georgian, I support law enforcement agencies enforcing the laws on the books that address straw purchases and moving guns illegally across state lines.

But don't try to make it about more gun laws to hinder law abiding folks's ability keep and bear arms.

[SteveM]

7. Brady Center? Aren't they GOP-founded, GOP-led? nt

[xchrom]

3. Recommend

[jody]

4. Link to ATF Firearms Trace Data below. Page 6 of the 2009 report shows flows.

http://www.atf.gov/statistics/

[gorfle]

5. And yet firearm crime is at an all-time low.

Firearm crime continues to decline precipitously, in spite of the fact that 2009 was a record-breaking year in firearm and ammunition sales.

[jody]

6. How many of ATF's claimed traces were actually involved in a crime resulting in a conviction? n/t

[virginia mountainman]

8. Can't believe a word Brady says...

They was just caught selling their membership and email lists to spammers, when their own privacy policy says they would NEVER do that.. This is just the most recent "whoppers" the Brady Camapain has been caught in. But this is to be expected, after all, they are Republican


Read more here...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x321695

[spin]

9. I-95 is listed as a cause of Georgia being a gun trafficking state..

Georgia has long been considered a “source state” for guns traded in other states because of relatively weak laws and access to interstates, especially I-95, which has been known as “the iron pipeline” because it is a route used to ship guns from the Southeast to northeastern states with much tougher laws.
http://www.ajc.com/news/georgia-guns-still-showing-548840.html

Obviously we need to eliminate I-95.

[benEzra]

10. "Relatively weak" compared to what? The other 40+ states with similar laws? (n/t)

[rrneck]

11. How many guns from Georgia

were used in lawful self defense?

[Endangered Specie]

12. Wait, I thought it was Virginia???

[PavePusher]

13. The goal posts are on a tour, apparently... n/t

[Travis Coates]

14. The goal post never moved

It's right where it's always been "Ban private ownership of firearms"

[Euromutt]

15. No, it *used* to be Virginia

Daniel Polsby covered this brilliantly fifteen years ago (http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/PolsbyFirearmCosts.htm):

For illustration: it has been widely noticed that the effectiveness of local gun control laws can be defeated by gun runners, who load up on guns in low regulation jurisdictions and sell them--illegally--in high regulation jurisdictions. Several years ago it was widely noticed that many of the guns seized from criminals by Washington, D.C., police had originally been procured in Virginia. Public indignation led to Virginia enacting a law that would allow only one gun per month to be purchased legally by a given individual.

This exercise damaged the Capital's illicit gun market little if at all; the gun runners simply moved a few states south, to Georgia, where no such rationing is practiced. Of course it is easy to turn this observation into a plea for Georgia now to do something (which would move the action to Texas or Arkansas) and thence into a polemic for a national firearms law; but that sort of twist in the argument tends to obscure the source of the difficulty, which does not lie in the disuniformities or inadequacies of various states' firearms laws but in the fundamental economics of the crime business. Of course gun runners will seek the least cost and most convenient source of supply, whatever it may be, legal markets, if available, but if they cannot deliver what is demanded, the turn to illegal markets, of smuggled guns or guns manufactured in cottage industry, is a simple operation.

The whole piece is a good read.