‘Iron Pipeline' carries guns from Jonesboro to New York

By Ty Tagami

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

A pawn shop in a Jonesboro strip mall was a major source of illegal weapons recovered by New York City police last year, according to a media report.

More illegal guns seized by police there came from Arrowhead Pawn in Jonesboro than from any other source outside New York state, the New York Daily News reported Monday.

Georgia is part of a south-to-north "Iron Pipeline" around New York's comparatively tough gun laws, the newspaper declared. Eleven suspects were arrested on weapons possession charges related to nine guns purchased at Arrowhead, the newspaper reported.

"The guns used to murder people are typically unlicensed and from easy-to-buy states, including Georgia," New York Police Department Commissioner Raymond Kelly is quoted as saying.

Arrowhead Pawn owner Arthur Banks was not at his Tara Boulevard shop Monday afternoon, according to a woman who answered the phone there. She would not give a number where he could be reached.

The New York Daily News, however, described the owner of the store as a "fiftysomething Georgian" who spoke only on condition of anonymity.

"We buy and sell guns legitimately," the owner told the Daily News. "What happens after that, we don't have any control over."

The AJC reported last week that Georgia again topped a list of states that sold guns found at crime scenes. For the second year in a row, guns sold in Georgia were recovered at more crime scenes outside Georgia than guns from any other state, according to a report issued by the anti-gun group the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The Washington-based group reached the conclusion using “trace” data compiled by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Gun rights advocates say the ATF information is misleading and used only to support criticism of Georgia’s relatively liberal gun laws.

Those laws grew more liberal earlier this month, when Gov. Sonny Perdue signed a law removing the restriction on guns at some “public gatherings.”

The new law, which took effect June 4, allows guns in airport parking lots and curbside passenger pickup areas, and does not specifically ban them inside terminals up to security checkpoints.

Legislation is pending in Congress to prohibit firearms inside unsecured areas in airports.