New York turns up heat on gun dealers

New York and other major cities are preparing to take on Congress and the gun lobby.

The reason: They're tired of their streets being flooded with guns bought somewhere else. In New York City, for instance, 85 percent of the guns used in crimes are bought legally in other states with far less stringent gun-control laws, most of them in the South.

Other East Coast metropolises, from Boston to Washington, face a similar gun influx. And so, despite a recent federal law that protects gun dealers and manufacturers from litigation, city leaders have signaled the start of a national movement to sue out-of-state gun dealers they consider "bad apples" - those who knowingly sell to so-called straw buyers and others who traffic in illegal guns.

"Right now, about 1 percent of gun dealers account for almost 60 percent of guns used in crimes nationally," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in his recent State of the City address. "This year, we are going to launch lawsuits against these irresponsible dealers, and we are going to hold them accountable for the terrible damage their guns cause."

That is a central part of his five-pronged strategy to attack gun violence in New York. It also includes toughening penalties for possession of illegal guns, intensive interrogating of suspects toting illegal guns so the source of the weapons can be better traced, and setting up a gun-offender registry similar to the ones set up for sex offenders so communities can know if a convicted gun offender lives in the neighborhood.

But the legal assault on gun dealers is the action expected to gain the most attention, and support, from other cities. Boston Mayor Tom Menino has already signaled he intends to join New York in its direct challenge to lawmakers in Washington.

In October, Congress approved legislation that gives dealers and manufacturers broad immunity unless they knowingly violate a law. New York contends the dealers it's going after are indeed aware that some of their buyers are fronts for traffickers.

In July 2004, Congress also enacted a law that forbids the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from making public the data that trace a gun's history, which can be vital in identifying irresponsible dealers. And last fall, lawmakers placed an amendment in ATF's spending bill that forbids such trace information from being used as evidence in court.

Advocates of withholding such information say it's important to prevent sensitive law-enforcement information from becoming public.

"Congress finally got frustrated by politicians and gun-ban advocates misusing their trace data in a way that was not only misrepresenting the truth, but was releasing sensitive information that could impede criminal investigation," says Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association (NRA).

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