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18 St. Louis U. Pub. L. Rev. 23 (1999)
BATF Gun Trace Data and the Role of Organized Gun Trafficking in Supplying Guns to Criminals

handle is hein.journals/stlpl18 and id is 29 raw text is: BATF GUN TRACE DATA AND THE ROLE OF ORGANIZED GUN TRAFFICKING IN SUPPLYING GUNS TO CRIMINALS GARY KLECK* To what degree do criminals obtain their guns, directly or indirectly, as a result of the activities of large-scale organized gun traffickers? This paper reviews evidence bearing on this issue, along with an assessment of the value of gun tracing data for drawing conclusions about the importance of gun trafficking. Any isolated instance of an unlawful transfer of a firearm could be technically regarded as gun trafficking, and thus a person who on occasion has illegally sold a gun could technically be described as a gun trafficker. However, this does not seem any more meaningful than describing a person who has privately sold their car to another private person as a car dealer. Many criminals sell guns they happen to come across in the course of burglaries and other thefts, but they are not in the business of selling guns. A more meaningful definition of a gun trafficker would be a person who persistently engages in a significant number of illicit gun sales for the purpose of profit, however one might define significant. Two varieties of gun trafficking have been the focus of especially strong law enforcement interest: (1) sales by federally licensed dealers in violation of the law, typically involving unrecorded sales to persons whom the dealer knows, or should know, are not legally entitled to purchase guns (corrupt dealers), and (2) unlawful gun sales by persons not licensed to be in the business of selling guns (illicit dealers). The former would primarily acquire their guns via lawful purchases from gun distributors, while the latter might acquire them through many different routes, including gun thefts, purchases from gun thieves, direct purchases from licensed dealers, or indirect purchases from dealers via strawman purchasers who buy guns from dealers with the intention of turning them over to the illicit dealer. The second type would include interstate gun runners who buy guns through resident straw purchasers in jurisdictions with weaker gun controls and move them to jurisdictions with stronger controls. * School of Criminology and Criminal Justice Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida 32306-1127.

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