THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 12, 1996 TAG: 9609120008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 75 lines
The conviction of 17 men - 14 in the U.S. District Court in Norfolk, 3 in Washington - for involvement in unlawful gun sales demonstrates that Virginia's one-handgun-purchase-per-month-per-person law has raised the risks for gun traffickers, Dennis Henigan, director of the legal-action project at the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, told Pilot staff writer Lynn Waltz.
Waltz's engrossing report on how 15 former members of Norfolk State University's Spartan Legion Band participated in funneling handguns to Washington street criminals ran last Sunday.
Henigan is right about the impact of Virginia's one-handgun-a-month legislation. Fewer and fewer handguns used in crimes in the Northeast are being traced back to Virginia. A federal one-handgun-a-month law, a provision of Brady II, the comprehensive federal Handgun Violence Prevention Act proposed by Handgun Control Inc., would tilt the odds against gun traffickers from here to Hawaii.
The United States is awash in firearms. The hard-core minority that controls the National Rifle Association asserts that with so many guns around, criminals can always get firearms, so what could be the point in erecting obstacles to law-abiding citizens' buying and selling handguns?
But criminals clearly lust for new handguns. Since taking effect in February 1994, the federal Brady Law has blocked handgun sales by federally licensed dealers to about 103,000 criminals and others prohibited from legally purchasing handguns. Law-enforcement officers seize new handguns from criminals all the time.
Of course, underground commerce in new or slightly used handguns is brisk. It is all the brisker because legal access to new handguns remains ridiculously easy in the United States.
Thanks to the zealous minority that rules the National Rifle Association, legions of federally licensed firearms dealers in the United States continue to pour new handguns into the civilian market. Too many of these handguns are quickly conveyed to street criminals.
But thanks to regulatory reforms suggested by the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence and implemented by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the ranks of federally licensed gun dealers are thinning. The General Accounting Office reported earlier this year that the number of federal licensees decreased 35 percent, from 260,703 to 168,395, between April 1993 and September 1995.
The decrease weakens the legal U.S. gun-distribution network at the grass roots. Among the regulations that have chilled enthusiasm for having a federal firearms-dealer license is the requirement that applicants submit fingerprints.
Controlling legal outlets for gun manufacturers' products is one way to lessen the promiscuous commerce in firearms. Limiting the number of guns sold to individuals at one time is another.
South Carolina legislated a one-handgun-a-month limit years ago. Virginia's limit was enacted during Gov. L. Douglas Wilder's term in office after the commonwealth became known as the leading provider of handguns to criminals in the mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states. Maryland, now a leading source of arms for Washington criminals, has followed Virginia's lead.
Brady II would further curtail trafficking in firearms by regulating handguns in much the same way that manufacture, sale, ownership, operation and transfer of motor vehicles are regulated.
Brady II wouldn't stop all violence committed with handguns, but it would help, just as tightened regulation of motor vehicles has helped reduce traffic fatalities (from 54,633, or 26.8 per 100,000 population, in 1970 to 43,000, or 16.5 per 100,000 population, in 1994).
Tightened regulation of handguns is the essential complement to laws and enforcement of laws against the misuse of firearms, just as regulation of motor vehicles is the essential complement to laws and enforcement of laws against misuse of motor vehicles.
Most Americans recognize the need for sensible regulation of guns. Firearms-related deaths total about 40,000 a year. Accidental deaths by firearms have declined, but gun-related homicides have increased by about 50 percent since 1987. Only the gun manufacturers, the gun dealers and the band of pro-gun lobbyists - all of whom profit from gun commerce - keep handguns flowing as freely as they do. by CNB