From The Brady Campaign:

The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence today issued a study which thoroughly dismantles the gun industry claim that federal law enforcement authorities penalize gun dealers for mere “trivial violations” of gun laws unrelated to public safety. Instead the study found that federal action against gun dealers typically occurs only after numerous, consistent and serious violations of the law.

The study — “‘Trivial Violations’?: The Myth of Overzealous Federal Enforcement Actions Against Licensed Gun Dealers” — was issued in the wake of House Judiciary Committee action approving H.R. 5092, a bill supported by the National Rifle Association, that would make it more difficult for federal authorities to revoke the licenses of gun dealers who violate the law.

The bill, which the House leadership has included as part of its “American Values Agenda,” is expected to come up for a final vote in the House very soon.

The Judiciary Committee relied in part on testimony from attorney Richard Gardiner, a former Assistant General Counsel for the National Rifle Association, who also represents gun dealers accused of violating the law. One of Gardiner’s clients is NRA Board Member Sanford Abrams, whose gun shop — Valley Gun of Baltimore — has been cited by the Justice Department as a “serial violator” of federal gun laws. Gardiner had asserted that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which regulates gun dealers, focuses on “trivial, immaterial violations unrelated to public safety,” a theme echoed by other supporters of H.R. 5092.

“It is fiction that federal law enforcement officials are penalizing gun dealers based merely on trivial, inadvertent mistakes,” said Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Center. “The gun lobby’s bill should be called ‘The Sandy Abrams Act,’ because its purpose is to protect irresponsible gun dealers like the one who sits on the NRA Board.”

Whose word would I take? An anti-gun group’s or a man who has forgotten more about gun laws than I’ll ever know. They conclude:

The new study examined every published Federal court decision over the last five years — 21 in all — in which gun dealers challenged ATF’s license termination actions. Instead of “trivial violations,” the cases are replete with frequent and serious illegal conduct by dealers, including:

— Selling guns to straw buyers, and even advising criminals to bring straw buyers into the store to fill out the paperwork;

— Selling an assault pistol with its serial number obliterated;

— Selling guns to juveniles;

— Having no record of sale for hundreds or thousands of firearms that were acquired by the dealer but were no longer in store inventory;

— Failing to conduct Brady background checks on gun buyers.

Here’s a piece on Gardiner’s findings:

Richard Gardiner, a Virginia attorney and an expert in federal firearms laws who often represents FFLs and gun owners under ATF scrutiny, argued that Lara’s case is actually closer to being the rule than the exception.

“The ATF tends to focus or has a significant focus on trivial, immaterial violations which are unrelated to public safety,” Gardiner said. “And they impose unreasonable standards of perfection which are simply not humanly achievable.”

As an example, Gardiner recalled an ATF review of 880 “Firearms Transaction Record Part I – Over-The-Counter” forms collected by one of his gun dealer clients. Of the 34,320 blocks of information collected on those documents, ATF found 19 clerical errors.

“That is a 99.96 percent perfect completion record,” Gardiner noted. “Yet ATF took the position that, because the dealer was aware — based on the fact that he had completed 99.96 percent of the forms accurately — that he committed a ‘willful violation’ with regard to the other four one-hundredths of a percent because he knew what his legal obligations were.”

The bureau revoked that gun dealer’s license and closed his business.

Posted in uncategorized on September 21st, 2006 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |