The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    If owning a gun is a crime, only criminals will have guns: how the industry doubles sales.

    By erica20 on Sun, 01/13/2013 - 3:34pm |

    Today's post looks at corrupt Federally Licensed Firearms dealers (FFLs) and straw buyers. Here is what I suspect, and I may or may not be able to prove it.

    It's about the money.

    The gun industry, by selling guns to criminals, creates a commensurate need for self-defense in the "law-abiding" public. And like Doublemint gum, it's double the pleasure, double the fun for gun manufacturers and dealers.

    I am still researching this topic but I am starting to believe that really looking at the supply side is a necessary twin sister to the "universal background check" concept which is making its way to the forefront of popular gun legislation ideas.

    So many of the guns we think of as being used in "crimes" (other than domestic violence incidents) come from Federally Licensed Firearms dealers, to straw buyers, and then into the hands of criminals. In some ways, the old saw that "If it's a crime to get a gun, only criminals will have guns" is technically true. If we make it harder for law-abiding people to buy guns without trying to cut off the flow of guns to our criminal element and take that to a logical extreme, yeah, more criminals will have guns than Regular Folk. Which makes law abiding gun owners very annoyed to say the least.

    The more I look at it, the more I believe that we could create the biggest drop in gun violence by allowing the ATF to more closely watch the gun industry and its dealers, or coming up with some other regulatory device that could prevent the flow of guns to criminals. However, I suspect that cutting off the flow on the supply side will touch the hidden third rail of the gun industry, and set off the biggest fight of all.

    It's about the money.

     

    Comments

    As Deep Throat once sagely said, "Follow the money."

     

    But when you talk about depriving corrupt people of their money, you REALLY get some push-back.  If this whole thing weren't so deadly serious, it would be fun to get out the popcorn and sit back and watch.  Sadly, it IS deadly serious, and these guys know just how to play people like Resistance just like a violin. 


    by CVille Dem on Sun, 01/13/2013 - 6:10pm

    Just once I will take the conservative stance on this matter; even if I would vote the other way.

    We are watched every day.

    Under Clinton and Bush and Obama we have been deprived of the right to be left alone.

    Between the various governmental agencies (state, Federal, county and municipal) and corporate entities we are actually watched every single minute via video cameras and credit card use and internet use (per main frames and portables and IPODs and....)

    I always loved that one question on just about every single job application:

    Have you ever been arrested?

    What the hell does the answer to that question have to do with anything?

    That Big Brother claimed to have probable cause to detain me?

    And there are the uninformed who fail to check state and federal statutes as to what constitutes an arrest. A traffic ticket is a petty misdemeanor and therefore is not an arrest any more than a parking ticket is an arrest.

    But these national 'lists' that are being proposed for whatever purpose will and can be used by anybody for any purpose regardless of 'safeguards' added to the laws.

    There are private hackers and corporate hackers and intra-governmental hackers.

    So now we will have national lists of felons.

    Fine!

    After the felon has served his time and even been granted his civil rights again; is he to stay on the 'list'?

    When is a health professional to note that the patient is 'bonkers'. And when is the health professional duty bound to put the patient on that list?

    If a family member files to have someone detained under some 72 hour hold for being 'bonkers' is that filing (even if later dismissed by the court) some evidence that puts the individual on the list?

    Oh, and if I purchase a 'weapon' should that weapon have a computer chip that doubles as a GPS. Or how about the bullets? And should access to information concerning the location of that weapon be accessible by computer to anyone or to any corporation besides some governmental unit?

    We put chips into dogs. Should we put these chips into the bodies of felons or people charged with felonies and on bail or perhaps should these chips be put into the bodies of those on probation?

    We do live in the era of Big Brother.

    The ability of someone like Wyatt Earp to run away from some jurisdiction and begin a new life would be impossible today without some complicated use of fraudulent papers and such.

    That's all I got except to say that in an era such as this it might be better just to be a member of some group that no one cares about. hahahah

    It is just safer to be ignored.


    by Richard Day on Sun, 01/13/2013 - 7:29pm

    Your traffic ticket can become a permanent part of your record especially as to insurance, the record of your gun purchase/background check must be destroyed after 3 days.

    NYT had an article that 24 states do not even report into the 'adjudicated mentally ill' system at the federal level, which would ban you from buying a gun.

    You must be 'adjudicated' mentally ill, BY A COURT to disqualify yourself for buying a gun.

    If poor or no state reporting is done on such cases, the mental health restriction entirely rests on the gun buyer self reporting his mental status on the ATF form he fills out when buying the gun (which is destroyed in 3 days anyway).

    That constitutes the back ground check system in the USA, and no check at all is done at gun shows.

    Wyatt Earp outlawed gun carry in Tombstone. It was the law.

    As far as gun $ales go, this is the country that holds that 'Government of the dollar, by the dollar, and for the dollar, shall not perish from this earth'.


    by NCD on Sun, 01/13/2013 - 9:21pm

    I always think about Earp and his brothers outlawing guns in town.

    There it is.

    We cannot abide guns in town.

    It is so damn simple.

    But NCD I am prognosticating again; new Fed laws creating lists and there will be no three day rules.

    We need to get rid of 3/4 of all guns in this country AND IT AINT GONNA HAPPEN.

    At any rate, the GUN lobby will always be with us; the masters of war and violence will always make a buck.

    Oh well....


    by Richard Day on Sun, 01/13/2013 - 9:26pm

    Wyatt Earp outlawed gun carry in Tombstone. It was the law.

    It's true

    If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns.

    I  heard rumors that the men who spoke against the Earp's, were shot in the back? How easy is that, for Earp Law.

    "We don't need no judges, we're the government" 

    Eventually the townsfolk, ran the Earp's out of town.


    by Resistance on Mon, 01/14/2013 - 12:33am

    Restriction on the supply side of gun distribution does not have to mean that every gun has to have a tracking device.

    Gun production makes a lot money. A lot of guns are used for criminal purposes. Therefore, gun manufacturers make a lot of money from criminals.

    Right now, the limits on guns is all about who can own them legally. It is hard to see how one could improve upon that state of affairs if one wants to run a surveillance state. The growth of crime and terror enable the measures needed to counteract them.

    I am not saying that there is an obvious way to set up controls on gun manufacture that avoid corruption or tyranny but I don't get how placing limits on the multinational market of guns is an a priori cancelation of anyone's right to privacy.


    by moat on Sun, 01/13/2013 - 9:31pm

    Reposting this comment from over at the the post on gun nut Yeager, since I suspect the discussion might move here.

    The gun-rights people don't want any legislation. Period. No background checks. No ability to track guns actually used in crimes. No sharing of such information between federal, state and local law enforcement (there's a federal law banning it). They want the Wild West, and they have cowed and bribed politicians and judges in a majority of states to give them exactly that:

    http://about.bloomberglaw.com/2013/01/09/border-gun-tracking-fought-by-g...

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/us/code-on-shell-casings-sparks-a-gun-...

    And this, from an ATF site:

    ATF maintains the Interstate Theft Program, which is a voluntary reporting program that handles the theft or loss of firearms from interstate shipments. Since there is no legal reporting requirement regarding such activity, there is a risk that these thefts will not be reported or investigated because of questions regarding jurisdiction.

    The gun lobby WANTS to facilitate the use of guns in crime, in part because public fear boosts profits. Sales go up when people die; they are actually profiting off Newtown. They are not interested in good-faith negotiations.


    by acanuck on Sun, 01/13/2013 - 11:52pm

    It is clear you misrepresent the purpose of the Second Amendment.

    They want the Wild West, and they have cowed and bribed politicians and judges in a majority of states to give them exactly that:

    It is a doomsday amendment, in order to protect all of our other rights, from tyranny.

    http://dagblog.com/link/gun-nuts-disarming-discourse-15992#comment-173204


    by Resistance on Mon, 01/14/2013 - 12:08am

    What weapons are protecting Australians from doomsday tyranny? 


    by NCD on Mon, 01/14/2013 - 9:21am

    According to my sources, it's their natural proclivity for sharing large quantities of beer and shrimp, then forgetting what it was they were arguing about.


    by erica20 on Mon, 01/14/2013 - 11:22am

    What weapons are protecting Australians from doomsday tyranny?

    I do know; the weapons of the Australian Aborigines were insufficient.

    From their perspective, doomsday did arrive and they suffered, because they couldn't match the weapons used against them.


    by Resistance on Mon, 01/14/2013 - 2:02pm

    Others have said it more clearly than I did, so thank you for that. It really does seem that something could be done to make it less necessary for people to need to defend themselves, and keeping guns out of the hands of criminals is one way to do it.

    To me, keeping a much closer eye on Federally Licensed Firearms dealers, even if we had to create some new mechanisms for doing so, would involve invading the privacy of far fewer Americans than trying to turn individual purchases into a dragnet via a perfect system of background checks. And it would definitely help cut the supply of guns to "thugs."

    (It might increase gun thefts.)

    Are gun manufacturers and dealers willing to sell fewer guns to better people??????

    We'll know soon.

    In the meantime, this is a fascinating site, put together by some of our nation's long-suffering mayors.

    http://www.tracetheguns.org

     


    by erica20 on Mon, 01/14/2013 - 1:38am

    It's not necessary to have a gun to protect yourself in America. That's a delusion of crackpots like Resistance, gun manufacturers, & sellers.


    by NCD on Mon, 01/14/2013 - 9:25am

    I agree that it's not a necessity--but the ownership is in the law so we need to leave it there...

    We could, however, continue to expose the marketing aspect. Nobody likes to be taken.


    by erica20 on Mon, 01/14/2013 - 11:26am

    Federally licensed gun dealers aren't the problem. Most guns used in crimes are bought at gun shows. Another large amount are straw purchases, where a person who can legally buy a gun buys it for a person who can't. In an undercover investigation 74% of sellers at gun shows will sell a gun even if the buyer tells them he can't pass a background check.

    I just bought a 22 for deer hunting 2 years ago at Walmarts and I had to wait while they did a background check. Its not a big deal if you're not a felon. Its evidence of the insanity of the extreme gun lobby that they won't even support closing the gun show loophole.


    by ocean-kat on Mon, 01/14/2013 - 11:43am

    I was surprised to read that FFLs actually are a problem, some of them, anyway. There are a small number of FFLs responsible for selling a large number of guns to straw buyers who are clearly purchasing them to re-sell to criminals. One way of figuring this out is to calculate the "time to crime" of guns--the amount of time it takes for a gun to be used in a crime after it leaves the factory.

    I feel confident that gun manufacturers COULD limit the sale of weapons to criminals with minimal invasion of personal privacy. The question is whether they'll accept the drop in sales--first, when the flow of guns to criminals is limited, and second, when people figure out they probably aren't very likely to be the victim of a gun crime and decide not to buy one for self defense. That will be a big hit for them.....


    by erica20 on Mon, 01/14/2013 - 12:00pm

    You keep using the abbreiviation FFL to mean "Federally Licensed Firearms" (I think). Should it be FLF, or am I misunderstanding the abbreviation? I'm thinking I'm misunderstanding the abbreviation, as from context you're using the abbreviation to refer to the sellers and not the firearms themselves.


    by Verified Atheist on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 11:39am

    I have been wondering about Erica's abbreviation too, figured from context that she must mean dealers, but wasn't 100% sure.


    by artappraiser on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 12:15pm

    I think the abbreviation means "Federal Firearms Licence" and it is a licence to sell.

    But thanks, I'll check and see if I'm using it correctly.


    by erica20 on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 12:23pm

    The frequent mention of ‘manufacturers’ does confuse things.
    "I feel confident that gun manufacturers COULD limit the sale of weapons to criminals with minimal invasion of personal privacy.'
    My analogy would be to breweries and distilleries. Everywhere I have bought alcohol since I was twenty-one has been through a licensed dealer which operate under strict regulations. Sometimes people cheat and get around those regulations with fake ID. Sometimes ‘straw buyers’ who are twenty-one buy booze for their twenty year old friends. Sometimes a kid will get into his parent’s stash. Crimes or accidents resulting from these work-arounds should not be blamed on the manufacturer of the brew.


    by A Guy Called LULU on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 12:37pm

    Alcohol isn't such a useful tool in drug-running, terror and murder.


    by erica20 on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 3:36pm

    Lulu, in all seriousness I feel I should clarify that when I talk about oversight at this level I'm talking about large numbers of guns being funneled to large numbers of really bad people, (who do not have 2nd Amendment rights,) stuff so obviously illegal that it's amazing it's allowed to go on.

    Even the kind of teenage hijinks you are talking about can go bad, which is why bars and liquor stores CAN be held liable for selling liquor to those who shouldn't be drinking. But the scope and intent of your examples just doesn't compare with selling AT LEAST 10% of one's designed-to-cause-fatal-injury product to people who are quite likely to use it to threaten, maim or kill humans.

    We're not talking about high-spirited kids skirting the law in hopes of having a little fun here. Those kids wouldn't even know where to find these dealers. We are talking about dealers who KNOW this is what they're doing, and do it...because they can. And we are talking about manufacturers who know who these dealers are, and sell to them anyway, because there is no penalty for doing so, and because it really boosts sales of guns for self-defense!

    If I thought there was anything benign or good-faith going on in the process by which these guns get to unscrupulous dealers, believe me, I wouldn't be writing this.


    by erica20 on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 4:04pm

    And we are talking about manufacturers who know who these dealers are, and sell to them anyway,

    Do we know for a certainty or is this speculation?

    What's next, start suing car manufactures who know their product, to be the most popularly stolen car, used in criminal activities? 

    The Ten Most Stolen Cars In America

    1994 Honda Accord,1998 Honda Civic, 2006 Ford F-150,1991 Toyota Camry, 2000 Dodge Caravan,1994 Acura Integra, 1999 Chevy Silverado, 2004 Dodge Ram, 2002 Ford Explorer, 1994 Nissan Sentra

    So having the knowledge that these top ten are the most stolen, you better not be a dealer of any of these cars; you just might be suspected of aiding and abetting criminal activity?


    by Resistance on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 5:08pm

    These cars are easy to steal, which is why they are stolen. Reasonable manufacturers, I believe, changed the ignition design so that they would not be so easy to steal.

    It's not a useful example--because the guns in question here are being paid for, which stolen cars are not.


    by erica20 on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 8:01pm

    VA, I looked it up now, found it's the common usage for "Federal Firearms License"; here from a very old  Frontline program on handguns--

    (I don't know how old so beware the details and laws stated may have changed:

    What is an FFL?

    A Federal Firearms License is required to allow a person or company to sell or manufacture firearms. There are 11 categories of FFLs, including dealer, importer, manufacturer, and collector. All but about 20,000 of the 124,000 FFL holders in the US are gun dealers. FFLs are regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

    What is required to obtain a FFL?

    Until the 1994 Crime Bill was passed, it was easier to obtain an FFL than a driver's license. The process is more stringent today. Now, potential dealers must be photographed and fingerprinted, have an interview with an ATF inspector, prove they have a place of business, notify the chief law enforcement officer in the area they intend to sell or manufacture guns, certify compliance with all state and local laws, pass a background check, and pay $200.00.


    by artappraiser on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 6:14pm

    Thanks. So technically an FFL is the license, not the license holder, but it's easy to imagine a language adaptation over the years where the term has also come to be applied to the holder - or it might just be an invention of Erica, which is perfectly fine by me as well. smiley


    by Verified Atheist on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 9:45pm

    Yes. It's a licence to be in some aspect of the gun business. I think they do call them FFLs; I'm not creative enough to make something like that up.

     


    by erica20 on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 10:44pm

    Agreed; the gun show idiocy needs to stop. Congress must close this loophole.


    by demunchained on Mon, 01/14/2013 - 6:38pm

    Erica, it's been in the back of my mind when I've see your comments on this point is that I know NYC has been on this issue for a long time, I could vaguely recall something about Guiliani when he was mayor (or maybe even when he was a federal prosecutor!) I even remember it at length, like on a TV or radio talk show, and talk about about how NYC knows where most he illegal guns are coming from, like along these lines: it's from this gun shop in PA and this other one in another state and we're trying to do something about it but we can't

    It was driving me nuts, and I finally figured out some good search keywords and I found this, and it doesn't look too good for your point;

    my bold to point that I did remember the big discussion and that it was  in Mayor Guilani's time that it started, and then further down to point out to you that Bloomberg picked it up as trying to get at the manufacturers:

    April 30, 2008, 12:34 pm

    U.S. Court Rejects New York Gun Lawsuit

    By ALAN FEUER,
    New York Times

    A federal appeals court dismissed New York City’s blanket lawsuit against the gun industry on Wednesday, ruling that a relatively new federal law protects gunmakers against third-party litigation.

    The appellate ruling [pdf] killed off — once and for all, perhaps — legal efforts by the city to charge gunmakers and distributors with knowingly flooding illicit, underground markets with their weapons. The suit, initially filed in 2000, was debated so much nationally that former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani was even criticized during his presidential campaign for having initially supported it.

    In December 2005, Judge Jack B. Weinstein, of United States District Court in Brooklyn, allowed the suit to move forward despite protests by gunmakers like Beretta U.S.A., Browning Arms, Colt Manufacturing, Glock and Smith & Wesson, which pointed to a federal law passed two months earlier in October. That law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, banned all third-party suits against the gun industry except for those in which a plaintiff could prove that gunmakers had violated other state or federal statutes in their sales and marketing practices.

    Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration argued that the gun manufacturers, by failing to monitor retail dealers closely enough, allowed guns to end up in the hands of criminals. As a result, the manufacturers created a “condition that negatively affects the public health or safety,” the city said and, thus, violated New York State’s public nuisance law.

    But the Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that argument, ruling that the state nuisance law did not constitute a permissible exception under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.


    by artappraiser on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 6:04pm

    And a side note--it's because of the NYPD's longtime desire to get those illegal guns off the street that "Stop and Frisk" was initially developed, and it is constantly challenged in the courts:

    http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/stop_and_...

     


    by artappraiser on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 6:11pm

    I'm not surprised that stop and frisk is challenged.

    I think there may be another try to make a difference on the trafficking front. But yes, it would get huge blowback from manufacturers.


    by erica20 on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 7:57pm

    But yes, it would get huge blowback from manufacturers.

    Doesn't this article suggest you couldn't even get to that stage? Here:

    The appellate ruling [pdf] killed off — once and for all, perhaps — legal efforts

    That what you are suggesting has been tried, in a long campaign lasting years, and has been smacked down by high courts already? I don't know for sure, but I would think what the ruling says and what the cases were should be investigated. If the mayors group aren't suggesting what you are suggesting, with Bloomberg at their head, then maybe they know going this route is a dead end, can't be feasibly done--been there, tried that, won't work, let's try something else?

    Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but I was also suggesting that maybe "stop and frisk" was developed once they knew that going the manufacturers/dealers route was a fail. The timeline in NYC seems like that to me: first there was the big brouhaha discussion about going after dealers and manufacturers regarding illegal guns and straw buyers, then after a break of a few years, they started "stop and frisk." It was like they were waiting on one thing, finally gave up on it and decided to try something else.


    by artappraiser on Wed, 01/16/2013 - 11:38am

    artappraiser, you may be right, and there is no way to make an impact on the gun trafficking via the courts.

    But then again, you never know, and there may be other ways to do it. I got some approval a couple of weeks ago for saying that "nothing makes people change their minds about a thing like seeing other people change their minds about it."

    A new frame makes for a different picture, and I think the new frame here needs to be the following:

    Q: "How does the gun industry know you need a gun to protect yourself from criminals?"

    A: "Because they just cashed the criminals' check!"

    It's not about the president's kids. It's about the money--money that gun companies shouldn't have.


    by erica20 on Wed, 01/16/2013 - 12:33pm

    It seems to me, however, that the lawsuit applies to manufactures and not to the retail dealers. The latter could still be sued, presumably.


    by Verified Atheist on Tue, 01/15/2013 - 9:48pm