Last week, the murders of four police officers in Idaho, Mississippi and New York – by felons prohibited from having guns – refocused America’s attention on gun violence.
This week, the FBI released preliminary statistics for 2014 showing a 77-percent increase in law enforcement officers shot to death in the line of duty. A new Everytown for Gun Safety analysis of 2013 data shows that of incidents in which officers were shot to death, more than half were committed by people prohibited from buying or possessing guns.
And once again, we’ve been reminded that for far too long, the debates about our country’s gun laws have defied common sense.
The truth is – both in Georgia and in states across the country – we can have both the Second Amendment and safety. There are federal and state laws on the books that not only respect our rights, but also stop violent criminals from having easy access to guns.
Those laws are working. But their success is limited because of a dangerous loophole in federal law.
Since 1998, the federal gun background check system has blocked more than 2.3 million potential gun sales to felons, domestic abusers and the seriously mentally ill. However, a loophole allows criminals to buy guns from private sellers – even from strangers they meet online or at gun shows – with no background check, no questions asked.
According to our research based on FBI and CDC data, 18 states have taken the initiative and passed laws requiring background checks on all handgun sales. In such states, 46 percent fewer women are shot and killed by intimate partners, 48 percent fewer people commit suicide with guns, and there is 48 percent less gun trafficking.
There are also 48 percent fewer law enforcement officers killed with handguns.
By contrast, Georgia’s lax gun laws fail to protect its residents. From 2000 to 2011, Georgia’s law enforcement officers were 80 percent more likely to be killed with handguns than officers nationwide. The state’s gun murder rate is 29 percent higher than the national average.
Beyond state lines? Georgia consistently ranks among the nation’s leading sources of interstate crime guns. In 2013, law enforcement in other states recovered from crime scenes more than 3,000 guns that were sold in Georgia, twice the national average. Last December, the gun used to kill two New York Police Department officers was traced back to a Jonesboro pawnshop notorious for being a source of crime guns. Last week, an NYPD officer was killed with a gun stolen from a pawnshop in Perry.
What can policymakers do? When I worked for New York City, we took action that showed how simple it was to ensure gun dealers weren’t feeding the illegal gun market, either purposely or inadvertently. Our goal wasn’t to restrict anybody’s Second Amendment rights. Our goal was to help dealers adopt best practices and prevent criminals from having easy access to guns. And it worked.
We filed suit against 27 gun dealers in five states. These dealers had been identified as sources of a disproportionate number of crime guns recovered in New York. Eventually, 21 dealers, including six in Georgia, agreed to settlements that required basic safety practices easy for them to implement.
The results? The flow of crime guns from targeted dealers was reduced by 84 percent. The year after we filed suit, crime guns from the dealers’ five states fell by 16 percent.
Unfortunately, Georgia took the opposite approach last year when it enacted the new “guns everywhere” law hailed at NRA headquarters. Now, it’s harder for the Department of Public Safety to prevent criminals from getting guns. “Guns everywhere” repealed the system that allowed the department to revoke licenses of gun dealers engaged in illegal practices.
The gun lobby likes to say laws don’t matter; that regardless of the rules, criminals will always find a way to get guns and do us harm.
Laws don’t matter? That’s a remarkable thing to say to police officers, who put their lives on the line to uphold our laws every day.
Basic policy fixes would help Georgia – and more states that are magnets for gun traffickers and gun thieves – reduce gun crime.
Background checks for gun dealer employees and other best practices, including the mandatory reporting of lost and stolen guns, can help keep guns off the illegal market and from being recorded as “stolen” when in reality they’re disappearing out the back door.
Most important, states can increase penalties for “straw purchasers” and require criminal background checks for all gun sales.
Each of these common-sense fixes is constitutional. If enacted in Georgia, each would have a measurable, positive impact on public safety. Georgians, especially police officers, would be safer.
Americans living far beyond Georgia’s borders would be safer, too.
John Feinblatt is president of Everytown for Gun Safety, www.everytown.org.
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