OK, say you're leading a religious flock in a city characterized by gun violence. This is what you read almost every day:

A 25-year-old man was shot in the head at about 3:30 p.m. in the 2100 block of West Fayette St., less than a block from Bon Secours Hospital.

It may even be a member of your congregation. What do you do? Preach patience? Turn the other cheek?

The Baltimore Sun reports on Heeding God's Call (HGC), a group of clergymen trying to be proactive by going to the sources, or possible sources, of illegal guns - gun dealers:

Clergy target Lansdowne gun shop

The clergymen stood inside the Lansdowne gun shop on Hollins Ferry Road, over a glass counter containing what they called the “instruments of death” responsible for turning the streets of Baltimore into a killing field.

“The city is devastated by violence — gun violence,” pressed Rev. Eugene Sutton, a bishop with the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, whose group protested this store on Wednesday. “We’re trying to get the illegal guns off the street. Too many people are dying. It’s destroying Baltimore.”
...

The clergy, about 14 of them, are part of a national group called “Heeding God’s Call, a Movement to End Gun Violence.” Catholic priests, ministers along with Jewish and Muslim leaders came to Clyde’s because it has been listed by authorities as being a top gun distributor to city criminals.

Clyde and his brother Bill were unmoved:

Bill and Clyde Blamberg, owners of Clyde’s Sport Shop for more than a half century, listened politely but firmly told the group to seek help elsewhere — Annapolis in particular. They refused to sign a code of conduct and agree to voluntary inspections and other restrictions beyond that of what state and federal law requires.

“They’re do-gooders who are trying their best to make a difference,” said 69-year-old Clyde Blamberg, out of earshot of the protest group called Heeding God's Call. Added his brother Bill, “We’re close to Baltimore City and we do make a lot of sales, all of them legal. What this group is doing isn’t going to do a lot good.”

I could make a joke about people named Blam-something selling guns, but they do have a point. There are already laws regulating the purchase of guns, so it is hardly fair to harass a small businessman if he scrupulously follows the law. From reading the Sun article, it would be easy to conclude that HGL should probably enter the legal fray between pro and anti-gun lobbyists, and leave the Blambergs alone. But while HGC initially struck me, and most of the Sun commenters, as misguided and naive, they may not be that far off-base. From the HGC website:

Handguns reach streets and neighborhoods through a highly developed illegal trade – gun trafficking. These are the guns used to threaten, wound, maim and kill. The linchpins of gun trafficking are criminal entrepreneurs, traffickers, the straw buyers who stand in for them to make their bulk purchases and gun dealers who look the other way and enjoy the profits.

Clyde and Bill may object, but according to that January 2008 Abell Report (PDF) referenced by the Sun, criminals like to use recently-purchased guns that can't be easily traced, and those guns tend to be traced to a short list of stores that includes theirs:

Around the country, a small number of dealers are typically responsible for selling a significant proportion of these new crime guns each year. Records collected by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) showed that between 1996 and 2000, about 1 percent of gun stores were the source of about 57 percent of the firearms used in crimes.

So Clyde's may have a lot of bad customers. But again, how much responsibility does Clyde's have once a weapon is sold?

Some are obtained for criminals by “straw” purchasers, who buy the weapon and turn it over to a person who is legally barred from owning a gun. Some are stolen – either from dealers or from gun owners. Employees of firearms dealers may steal guns or sell them illegally. Others simply change hands and eventually reach a person who uses it in a crime. And in some cases, gun runners obtain large numbers of guns and sell them on the street.

How can a small businessman do any more to stop misuse of guns than follow the rules (and be careful who they hire)? The problem seems to be that such stores don't follow the rules all that scrupulously and that the ATF is slow to shut them down. Another store on that list with Clyde's was Valley Guns:

The ATF has been viewed for many years as slow to inspect and undertake enforcement actions against firearms dealers. Under federal law, ATF is limited to annual inspections of firearm dealers, but in reality, they can go years between inspections. A 2004 report by the Justice Department’s inspector general described ATF’s inspections of firearms dealers as “infrequent and of inconsistent quality.”

Once it does find violations by a gun dealer, ATF can be extremely slow to move to revoke a license. A prime example has been the recent enforcement action against Valley Guns in Parkville. ATF agents first identified a significant problem at Valley in 1997, when inspectors found that 45 guns were missing from Valley’s inventory. Another inspection in 2001 found 133 weapons missing. Again, ATF took no action to revoke Valley’s license. By 2003, ATF found that Valley had 422 guns unaccounted for, which ATF noted later could have “gone out the back door” to illegal purchasers.

However, it was not until 2004 that ATF moved to revoke the Valley Guns owner’s license – seven years after the first serious violations were found. ATF documented the long history of rules violations by Valley and did revoke thelicense. The owner of Valley Guns challenged the revocation in federal court, which allowed him to maintain his dealer’s license pending a court resolution. A federal judge found, though, that Valley had repeatedly violated firearms regulations, noting that “the undisputed fact is that because of [Valley’s] lapses, scores of firearms are unaccounted for, and therefore, untraceable.” An appellate court upheld the decision in 2006.

During the time between the 1997 ATF inspection and the revocation of Valley’s license in 2006, it is apparent that hundreds of guns from the store were used in crimes in Baltimore City. In the 15 months between January 2006 and March 2007, for example, 108 guns used in Baltimore City crimes were traced back to Valley Guns. After Valley’s licensure revocation, the store’s former owner, Sanford M. Abrams, was arrested in 2007 and charged with illegally selling an assault rifle to a man who later died in a gun battle with police. In January 2008, Abrams received only a five-year suspended sentence from a Baltimore County judge and agreed not to own or sell firearms.

So the system is working - but so slowly that many hundreds of guns disappear, and presumably make their way to make their way to criminals, while the wheels of justice are grinding. Perhaps Heeding God's Call, and other public outcry, may be able to speed up the process by encouraging more scrutiny by authorities. The Abell Report notes that greater scrutiny leads to changes in behavior by dealers which leads to fewer illegal sales:

Badger Guns, a Milwaukee gun dealer that was responsible for more than half of the crime guns used in the city, decided in 1999 to stop selling inexpensive handguns known as Saturday Night Specials. This decision led to a significant reduction in the number of new crime guns recently sold by the dealer – including both Saturday Night Specials and other models. Overall, the store’s action led to a 44 percent decrease in the flow of all new guns to criminals in Milwaukee. Johns Hopkins University researchers concluded that the more intensive scrutiny placed on the dealer led to the major reduction in the number of handguns sold by the dealer that made their way to criminals. The study tracked handgun sales in Milwaukee between 1999 and 2002. However, subsequent trace data shows that that Badger Guns is once again responsible for a significant number of Milwaukee’s crime guns, suggesting that a drop-off in the attention being paid to the dealer’s practices has led to renewed illegal trafficking of guns sold by the dealer.

But it is difficult to mandate constant scrutiny against gun dealers, when many enthusiasts consider any sort of government regulation tantamount to a violation of the Second Amendment.