AP News, August 20th, 2007
Local police forces last year asked the ATF for help investigating whether an estimated 284,000 weapons were legally sold, officials said Monday.
But Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives acting Director Michael J. Sullivan said he's worried that fewer police departments will request assistance because of new legislation barring public release of so-called gun trace data, which tracks gun sales in specific cases.
"My biggest concern is we have law enforcement departments out there that believe that they can't get access to trace information, so they're not even asking for it," Sullivan told reporters at ATF headquarters. "And it's undermining their ability to advance their investigations."
"There's little that I can think of that they've requested that we can't provide to them," Sullivan said.
To underscore the data's availability, the ATF released a state-by-state breakdown of requests for help in tracking down guns recovered at crime scenes, including by type of firearm and where they were sold.
The confusion stems from a provision in the Justice Department's spending plan for next year that prohibits ATF from releasing case-specific information to the public.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has pushed for the information that he says will help local officials uncover dealers who sell guns that disproportionately end up in the hands of criminals. But gun rights advocates like the National Rifle Association, who successfully fought for the ban, said mayors want the data to sue out-of-state gun dealers.
Sullivan's explanation Monday still didn't satisfy some city officials who said they remain unclear on whether the ATF would penalize police for using trace data to map illegal gun sales on the black market.
"It has been impossible to get a straight answer out of the ATF on trace data," said John Feinblatt, Bloomberg's criminal justice coordinator.
ATF used to recap generic gun trace data, like the information released Monday, in annual reports. But Sullivan said budget cuts in part hampered the bureau's ability to compile and release those reports _ although he pledged to do so in the future.
Additionally, 8 percent of police agencies nationwide can investigate the gun sales on their own with technology called e-trace, Sullivan said. About 6,000 of the estimated 17,000 police departments in the U.S. ask ATF for help with at least one firearm each year, he said.
Last year, California asked for ATF assistance in tracing 21,223 guns, more than any other state, the data released Monday show. The overwhelming majority of the guns _ more than 8,000 _ were originally sold within the state. Just over 600 guns recovered at California crime scenes were sold in neighboring Arizona, and the rest of the firearms came from all over the country.
California was among five states _ including Illinois, New York, North Carolina and Texas _ that logged more than 10,000 requests.
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The ATF's state-by-state breakdown of gun trace data can be found at: http://www.atf.gov/firearms/vcit/index.htm
