Deadly, Intentional Ignorance on Guns

[billbuckhead]

Deadly, Intentional Ignorance on Guns
The Bush administration has blocked collecting data on gun sales and crime. Now Congress wants to go even further.
September 3, 2006

TWO YEARS AGO THIS MONTH, the federal ban on assault weapons expired. Since then, sales of such weapons have almost certainly increased, and the number of crimes in which they have been used has undoubtedly risen. Unfortunately, there's no way to know for sure. That's because the public and law enforcement agencies no longer have access to information they could routinely get just a few years ago.

A decade ago, the federal government was beginning to make some progress in making information about crime and guns more widely available. During the Clinton administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms started analyzing its vast database for the first time and in 2000 released its "Commerce in Firearms" report. This report — which was supposed to be issued annually — was full of information about gun sales as well as sales patterns of weapons used to commit crimes.

Armed with that information, federal and local law enforcement began cracking down on suspect dealers and shifting more resources to areas with disproportionally high levels of gun crimes. The federal government also began collecting information from 40 cities nationwide about their gun crimes and looking for helpful patterns in the data.

Today, such information is no longer available. In 2003, federal lawmakers slipped in a provision to an appropriations bill that bars the ATF from spending money to analyze its gun-crime database or making any data available to the public. The federal government also has stopped collecting cities' gun-crime data.

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<http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-guns3sep03,0,3318256.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrailhttp://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-guns3sep03,0,3318256.story?coll=la-opinion-leftrail>

The truth can help start to set us free from the highest rates of gun violence of advanced nations.

[Jackpine Radical]

1. I didn't kn ow about the shut-down of gun/crime data.

Very interesting, & makes possible the concealed-carry crowd's claim that nobody has documented any problems as a result of CC.

BTW--Haven't seen you around here much lately. I remember your posts from the '04 election season & the attempts at Bush exposes.

[benEzra]

2. This isn't about CCW-related data or homicide data, it's about

releasing GCA '68 trace data to organizations not involved in a criminal investigation, as I understand it. It's a peripheral issue that I haven't been following much.