BFor Immediate Release July 11, 2006
Contacts: Bryan Miller (856) 371-3038 Tom Jardim (973) 267-9600
STATE’S LEADING GUN VIOLENCE PREVENTION ORGANIZATION CALLS ON US SENATE TO REJECT DAMAGING RESTRICTIONS ON PUBLIC ACCESS TO GUN TRACE INFO
Ceasefire NJ Deplores Gun Lobby-Inspired Effort to Keep Public, Media and Law Enforcement in Dark About Illegal Guns
Trenton: During the last week of June the US House of Representatives passed the annual bill (H.R.5672) defining appropriations for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The measure would keep in effect for another year a series of draconian restrictions on public, media and law enforcement access to data derived from traces of crime guns collected, collated and analyzed by ATF. These gun lobby-inspired limitations are clear dangers to public safety. The bill now passes to the US Senate, where it will first be considered today by the Commerce, Justice and Science subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee.
Tom Jardim, Board Chair of Ceasefire NJ, the coalition of groups and individuals devoted to reducing gun violence, said: “The US House of Representatives has chosen gun industry profits, made from the illegal distribution of their products to criminals and violent teens, over public safety. We call on the US Senate to right this wrong. There is no reasonable explanation for restricting public, media and law enforcement access to information critical to development of policies to deal with the illegal gun business that devastates our nation’s communities.”
Most egregiously, H.R.5672 prohibits ATF from releasing any data contained in the Firearms Trace System database, except on a case-by-case basis to law enforcement, hence preventing law enforcement and policy-makers from looking at patterns of illegal gun trafficking and then pursuing illegal gun traffickers. It also prohibits the use of said data in civil litigation.
Bryan Miller, Executive Director of Ceasefire NJ, said: “Passage of H.R.5672 will create enormous difficulties for law enforcers and policy makers as they seek information necessary to determine and analyze crime gun flows and potential solutions to same. Clearly, the gun lobby, industry and their clients in the Congress do not want anyone to know America’s ‘dirty little secret,’ that violent crime is fueled by a continuous business that moves guns from legal sale at gun shops to illegal sale on street corners. The business of illegal guns is an important profit-maker for many gun makers, which is why the gun lobby is seeking to keep us all in the dark by pushing the restrictions in H.R.5672.”
Jardim continued: “These damaging restrictions also make it harder for victims' families to file civil suits against gun dealers who may have broken the law, making families victims twice-over and encouraging rogue gun dealers to break the law with impunity.”
Miller said: “Passage of this gift to the gun industry will endanger public safety here by making it harder for residents to know from whence the guns that damage our communities come.”
