cuchulainn
Member
"Twice a day"???
from the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/18/n...00&en=238b3e824cc3f823&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
from the New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/18/n...00&en=238b3e824cc3f823&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
New York Dealers Are Prominent on Case's List of Guns Tied to Crime
By ANDY NEWMAN
The John Jovino gun shop in Little Italy is New York City's oldest gun retailer and one of the more reputable ones, with a clientele often consisting of law enforcement professionals. Woody's Pawn Shop in Charleston, S.C., concedes that its guns are often bought by customers who may sell them on the black market.
The two dealers, however, share a dubious distinction: they are near the top of the list of gun stores whose products were linked to crime in New York City in the first detailed analysis made public of the sources of firearms belonging to criminal suspects.
The analysis, done by a Columbia University professor given access to a long-suppressed database maintained by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, confirms some conventional wisdom. For example, it shows that 90 percent of the guns recovered in crime investigations in New York from 1996 to 2000 were bought out of state, primarily in the South, where it has long been relatively easy to buy a gun.
But the analysis also found that despite New York's famously strict gun laws — it can take up to a year for the police to approve a permit request — 3 of the top 10 dealers were in New York City, and a fourth was on Long Island.
The analysis was done by Howard Andrews, a biostatistics professor at Columbia's School of Public Health, for a lawsuit against gun manufacturers filed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The case is being heard in Federal District Court in Brooklyn.
The N.A.A.C.P. says that the data shows that a relatively small number of the thousands of gun dealers in the country sell the vast majority of guns used in crimes. The association does not seek money in the suit, but instead wants gunmakers to do more to hold their customers — the dealers — accountable by requiring them to be more cautious about who is being sold guns.
"Eighty-six percent of dealers in the country have zero traces," said Mathew S. Nosanchuk, a lawyer working with the N.A.A.C.P. on the case, referring to the investigations done by the firearms bureau of crime-related guns. "So the fact that any dealer has even a small number of traces is significant."
The N.A.A.C.P.'s suit charges more than 100 makers and distributors with supplying criminals with guns, essentially through negligence.
Lawrence G. Keane, chairman of the Hunting and Shooting Sports Heritage Foundation, an industry trade group, said it was not feasible for gunmakers to use the trace requests they get from the firearms bureau to ferret out irresponsible dealers. The firearms bureau has fought the release of the trace data, arguing that doing so could endanger its investigations. "The plaintiffs want us to conduct investigations that A.T.F. does not want us to conduct, using information we have never had," Mr. Keane said.
A bill recently approved by the House Judiciary Committee would kill the N.A.A.C.P.'s suit and others like it by retroactively granting gunmakers immunity from many kinds of legal action.
Dr. Andrews found that of roughly 11,700 New York City crime guns traced by the firearms bureau, 102 guns, or nearly 1 percent, were originally bought at John Jovino, a 90-year-old, family-owned store marked by a large wooden revolver, across from the old police headquarters on Centre Market Place.
Only two now-defunct dealers in Virginia sold more crime guns recovered in New York City, the analysis shows. The data ends in 2000, so more recent tightening in state gun laws — particularly in Virginia, where buyers are now limited to one gun a month — is not reflected.
John Jovino's owner, Anthony Imperato, said his store's ranking seemed impossibly high. He added, though, that until the late 1980's, his shop was one of the biggest dealers in the country, selling in bulk to police departments around the world, and that hundreds of thousands of guns sold by John Jovino are still out there, some of which, inevitably, end up in the wrong hands.
"All our customers are either law enforcement or New York City permit holders," Mr. Imperato said, "But there are guns that people lose, guns that are stolen from people's houses."
While convicted felons are not allowed to buy guns anywhere in the country, legal gun buyers, known in law enforcement as straw buyers, buy guns and sell them on the black market. Neither Dr. Andrews nor the N.A.A.C.P. has alleged that John Jovino, or any particular dealer, is insufficiently discriminating about who is sold guns.
Rogue dealers who are prosecuted have been publicized before, but Dr. Andrews's analysis, reported yesterday by Newsday, is the first that shows the unwitting role of law-abiding dealers.
At Woody's Pawn Shop, the source of 68 recovered guns, a salesman, Frank Keitt, said he was not surprised that the store where he worked was the third-ranking active dealer on Dr. Andrews's list.
"You got some people that come from up north and get South Carolina ID," Mr. Keitt said. "They may come down here and buy a gun and sell it to someone else."
Mr. Keitt said that the firearms bureau "calls down here for a gun trace probably twice a day."
It has taken years of legal battles and a court order for gun-control proponents to obtain the firearms bureau's trace data.
Even after the judge in the present lawsuit, Jack B. Weinstein, ordered the bureau to release the data, gunmakers moved to have Dr. Andrews's testimony closed to the public but were rebuffed.
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
