Tracing traffickers

By The Gazette Editorial Board

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Gun control debates are raging around the country, from coffee shops to statehouses and on Capitol Hill.

The question of balancing public safety with individual privacy and Second Amendment freedoms is not an easy one to resolve.

Critics of tighter gun-ownership restrictions frequently argue that laws targeting licensed, law-abiding gun owners won't solve our nation's problem with gun violence. If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns, as the maxim goes.

So how do we target the outlaws? How do we infiltrate shadowy trafficking networks and staunch the flow of weapons used in criminal activity - also called “crime guns”?

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives National Tracing Center conducts firearms tracing at law enforcement agencies' request. Certainly the ATF's reputation suffered in the wake of the “Fast and Furious” gun-tracking controversy. Nonetheless, the ATF has much expertise and is the go-to agency in trafficking issues.

ATF experts strongly suggest that law enforcement agencies routinely ask them to trace all the firearms they recover in criminal investigations, but a Gazette investigation (see page 1A) has found that Iowa agencies make spotty use of this practice.

Another roadblock: Federal restrictions that limit the means by which ATF researchers conduct the trace.

Increasing the pool of crime gun data and streamlining the research and reporting process would help

police and the public better understand how guns make the jump from lawful commerce to criminal possession, and how to stop it.

CRIME GUNS

The ATF is the only federal agency authorized to trace firearms for law enforcement agencies. The agency does not maintain a national database of lawful gun ownership.

Initiating a trace is as simple as submitting an electronic request through a secure web-based system. Law enforcement agents can track the trace's progress and query trace-related data online. It is a free service to law enforcement agencies.

The agency provides a summary describing the firearm, where and when it was purchased and by whom. They calculate the amount of time between its initial purchase and recovery by law enforcement.

There are limitations. Finding out whether a gun has been reported stolen often requires a separate inquiry with a different federal agency. The trace only uncovers the initial sale of a firearm and even then it's not always possible to trace a gun back to the point of sale, especially for older firearms.

Some Iowa law enforcement officials say they frequently are able to solve crimes without tracking a gun's history - that the trace is not necessarily important to an individual case - and that traces results can be slow.

Cedar Rapids police, for example, trace firearms that are believed to have been used in the commission of a crime, Chief Wayne Jerman told us last week. Other recovered firearms may be traced at investigator discretion, he said.

“Each situation is unique,” Jerman said. “If the investigator knows there is no value in the trace, we would not want to place an additional burden on ATF. Their burden is substantial enough.”

OUTDATED METHODS

Because federal law expressly prohibits any kind of fully automated gun registry, ATF workers at the National Tracing Center are forced to use outdated, inefficient research techniques to gather information that could be much more easily learned.

Tracers start by contacting a firearm's manufacturer in order to track down the wholesaler who can help identify the dealer who initially sold the firearm. If any of those sources are unavailable, tracers must resort to sifting through millions of sales records in an effort to trace a single weapon.

While we support gun owners' rights to privacy and protection against unjustified confiscation of weapons, there must be a way to allow tracers to use 21st Century tools.

REASONABLE IMPROVEMENTS

Until recently, provisions, known as Tiahrt Amendments, attached to federal spending bills limited law enforcement from accessing crime gun trace data unless it was part of a discrete investigation.

But each firearm seized as part of a criminal investigation can be an important piece of a much larger puzzle: helping investigators understand how guns used in crime are moved around the country.

Federal lawmakers eventually recognized that fact and those access restrictions were lifted in fiscal year 2010. In doing so, they took a critical step forward in allowing investigators to track and attack the flow of firearms used in crime. But there's more to do.

By adopting comprehensive tracing policies, agencies will help generate a robust database of information regarding recovered firearms.

The combined data could help agencies identify how crime guns are circulated within their jurisdictions and provide critical information to help detect and dismantle larger firearms trafficking networks.

Removing restrictions that force crime gun tracers to use cumbersome research practices is an equally important piece of the puzzle.

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