Last January, a jury in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn found 15 firearms makers negligent and nine of them liable in three shootings, in the first case in which the gun industry has been found responsible for death or injury caused by its products. The central in the case was negligent marketing.
The new report by Dave Kopel (2000) found that 51% of the guns used in crimes by juveniles and people ages 18 to 24 were acquired by intermediaries acting on behalf of the real buyer. 14% of the guns used in crimes by juveniles and young people were sold by private sellers without federal firearms licenses and 10% were sold at gun shows, flea markets or through ads in gun magazines, none of which require buyers to show identification or undergo background checks.
A senior administration official said the report would disprove widespread skepticism that there was an illegal market for firearms used in crimes. In the past, gun makers argued, with the support of many law enforcement authorities, that most guns used in crimes were stolen rather than purchased new or nearly new by criminals. But the report found that only 35 percent of guns used in crimes by juveniles and young people were stolen.
As a typical example of trafficking, the report cited a case in which the firearms agency traced three guns recovered in New Jersey, which has strict gun control laws, to a federally licensed dealer in Cleveland operating under less restrictive Ohio laws. Two of the guns had been used in homicides; one was in possession of a juvenile. An investigation found that the dealer had not kept records of most sales and had not performed background checks of purchasers as required by law. .
We can prevent these gruesome and horrible handgun-related homicides and violence in many ways. There are increased efforts of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to trace guns. These are tighter federal restrictions imposed on gun purchases by the so-called Brady law of 1994, named after James Brady, the former White House press secretary who was wounded in the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan.
