This is very appropriate-
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Friday February 4 12:13 AM ET
Clinton to Target 'Bad Apple' Gun Dealers
By Randall Mikkelsen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Clinton, stepping up his gun-control campaign, will announce steps on Friday to crack down on ``bad apple' gun dealers who sell the largest share of weapons used in crimes, the White House said.
Clinton is to announce the measures in conjunction with the release of a federal study finding that slightly more than 1 percent of the 83,272 federally licensed gun dealers in 1998 had sold more than half of the guns used in crimes.
``While the majority of gun dealers are law-abiding business people who recognize the importance of helping law enforcement identify gun criminals, today's report shows the need to focus resources on the relatively small number of dealers and pawnbrokers who are the source of most of the traced guns,' said an advance White House document on the report.
The president has put gun control high on his agenda this year, helping to highlight an issue for Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites) and other Democrats seeking election against Republican rivals who are often wary of gun-control measures.
In an effort to stop criminals from getting guns, Clinton will order the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to conduct ``focused inspections' of the 1,160 dealers who had 10 or more crime guns traced to them in 1999, said Eric Liu, deputy domestic policy director at the White House.
The agency also will require the 450 dealers who sold 10 or more guns used in crimes within three years of the sale to give it tracing information on all sales of used guns.
To help control loss or theft of guns from dealers, the agency will propose new regulations requiring dealers to report any discrepancies in inventory to the ATF and to report any loss of guns in shipment within 48 hours.
The agency can shut down dealers found to be egregious violators, but Liu said the Clinton administration has sought to give the agency more authority to apply lower-level forms of pressure such as multiple inspections.
Clinton on Friday will also urge Congress to pass his $280 million proposal to hire more ATF agents and more prosecutors to focus on gun crimes, and to pass his gun-control proposals, Liu said.
``He's going to call on everybody to help do their part to keep guns out of the wrong hands,' he said.
The federal study was conducted by the ATF and found that 1.2 percent of all licensed dealers in 1998 sold 57.4 percent of the guns used in crimes. The dealers' presence on the list made their practices ``suspect,' but some may be law-abiding and not necessarily at fault, Liu said.
``In many cases it may be the dealer is in fact a bad apple dealer and engaged in gun trafficking with an intent to sell to criminals. In other instances though, it may have more to do with just the fact that this particular dealer, who's a law abiding dealer, runs a high-volume business in an area where guns end up in crimes,' he said.
New York Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer, who conducted similar studies last year using ATF data, was more blunt in characterizing the dealers.
``These 1 percent of dealers obviously are selling to people they know are gun runners, they know are giving fake ID's, but they just look the other way,' he said.
``These are bad eggs,' Schumer said. ``It's spread throughout the country.' |
