Or for that matter at least 16,485 firearms? That's the number the Brady Organisation is saying went missing from 2009 to the middle of 2011 without a record of being legally sold. And the Brady's say this is likely to be a vast undercount of the total number of guns that disappeared from gun manufacturers in the two and a half year period.
The missing guns were noted at ATF compliance inspections of gun manufacturers. Nationwide there are 4,487 licensed gun manufacturers, but due to funding restrictions ATF conducts compliance inspections each year at only about one-fifth of the nation’s licensed gun dealers and manufacturers.
Weak federal gun laws allow gun manufacturers and dealers to operate without security or inventory controls. Under federal law, a gun manufacturer or dealer is not required to secure its inventory from loss or theft or take an inventory of its firearms to account for any that are lost or stolen.
This lack of any security or inventory requirement for gun manufacturers and dealers makes it easy for gun sellers to claim falsely that firearms they have sold illegally and “off-the-books,” were lost or stolen. Federal law requires that gun manufacturers and dealers report guns that are lost or stolen,18 but does not require them to undertake any effort to determine whether guns are missing from their inventory.
The notorious manufacturer was Kahr Arms. One of Kahr's employees, Mark Cronin, was alleged to have taken guns from the factory to sell on the street. It is alleged that Kahr Arms hired Cronin despite a public record of drug addiction, theft to support that addiction, alcohol abuse, and violence, including several assault charges. Cronin stated that he was able to take guns from the Kahr Arms factory at will, before the guns had serial numbers stamped on them. At the time, Worcester Police Captain Paul F. Campbell called Kahr Arm’s recordkeeping so “shoddy” that it was possible to remove weapons without detection.
In July 2011, Kahr Arms agreed to pay nearly $600,000 to end the case, and the settlement is the largest damages payment ever by a gun manufacturer charged with negligence leading to the criminal use of a gun. The settlement is also significant because it was made after enactment of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (“PLCAA”), a federal gun law that the gun industry contends shields it from most liability cases. By agreeing to the settlement, Kahr Arms averted a pending motion challenging the applicability and constitutionality of the PLCAA.
Kahr Arms had moved to dismiss the case, arguing that the PLCAA bars such cases. In response to Kahr Arm’s dismissal motion, Brady Center attorneys argued that the statute does not immunize gun companies, and is unconstitutional. Prior to enactment of the gun industry liability protection law, the court had ruled that the Guzman family’s claims were meritorious and should proceed to trial.
The gun lobby should be ashamed as hell at the amount of guns that have fallen through the cracks. Will it make a difference to anyone that the gun industry has "lost" 8 times as many guns in 2 years time as the ATF lost in their failed Fast and Furious program? But will that be pointed out on Fox News?
Hey, nothing like weak gun laws to get guns to criminals! And a tame press to stop the outrage.
The Brady Report can be found here.
How do you lose a gun? Or for that matter at least 16,485 firearms?
ReplyDeleteI dunno. Ask the government. They have more experience at it.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12866114
The ATF didn't lose any guns. They deliberately turned a blind eye in order to create justification for further infringing upon the 2nd Amendment rights of American citizens.
ReplyDeleteAnd your proof for that statement Aztecred is...?????
ReplyDeleteThe ATF's history of evil and corruption speaks for itself. This is just one more entry in the book full of proof.
ReplyDeleteThe gun guys say they want to get tough on criminals, but they suggest nothing to keep guns out of criminal hands, actively fight restrictions that would do so, and turn their heads when tens of thousands of guns go missing from unregulated manufacturers and gun shops. Then suddenly, when the ATF losses some guns in a failed attempt to trace them, suddenly the gun guys are up in arms about it? Hippocrits!
ReplyDeleteThe gun guys don't give a rat's ass about missing guns or allowing them into the hands of criminals.
Go on, gun guys, prove me wrong! What do you propose should be done to stem the flow of guns to criminals??
I wasn't referring to the recent ATF scandal. I was referring to the 190,000 firearms that the feds lost in 2007 alone. The number of firearms routinely lost by the government is far larger than those lost by dealers and manufacturers combined.
ReplyDeleteFWM, the ATF didn't lose 190,000 firearms in 2007; that is bullshit.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.federaltimes.com/article/20100218/DEPARTMENTS03/2180301/1001
this describes a few firearms lost by law enforcement that are clearly negligent, but the majority of lost firearms appear to be from events like Hurricane Katrina.
And it was our military which lost the 190,000 in Iraq, not the ATF.
ReplyDeleteI would point out that the Vance v Rumsfeld suit relates to the apparent incarceration and torture of an american citizen by the very people Vance was helping the FBI investigate for the loss of those firearms btw.
We should never have had the independent contractors waging war in Iraq, it was a great example of the clever looting of our government with the cooperation of the Bush Administration - independent contractors doing military jobs was a Cheney idea. The war profiteering and cheating has been enormous. And it appears that from the Vance testimony at least that they were behind the deals, at least in part, that sold off those 190,000 weapons.
We should never have BEEN in Iraq at all, much less the way we have waged these recent wars.
And btw, neither our military, nor any part of our government ROUTINELY loses large numbers of guns.
ReplyDeleteYou like to make up things about odd bits and bobs of numbers you come across here and there as if they were facts when they are not. A skip load of garbage you use to promote a gun fanatic position rather than a logical, unemotional and more moderate attitude regarding firearms.
I never said it was the ATF but rather I said the government. How does the government lose 190,000 Glocks and AK-47s?
ReplyDelete"I never said it was the ATF but rather I said the government. How does the government lose 190,000 Glocks and AK-47s?
ReplyDeleteSeptember 4, 2011 4:56 AM"
That sort of comment reminds me of the time that MikeyW said that I was wrong in thinking that 00 Buck couldn't do as much damage as a rifle bullet if it was used in a house for self defensse. What happened there was that Mikeywhiner MADE UP SOME SHIT and attributed it to me.
What I see here is FatWhiteMan saying something because he thinks it will slide by and let him be "right" while conflating two separate instances into one thing.
How were the weapons "lost" and who "lost" them?
This:
"During the Bosnian conflict, the United States provided about $100 million in defense equipment to the Bosnian Federation Army, and the GAO found no problems in accounting for those weapons."
is from here (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/05/AR2007080501299.html)
So, I guess that the problems with keeping track of teh gunz is related to GOP adminstrations?
And, strangely, it seems like Iraq became LESS safe for both the natives and Coalition forces after allathem gunz went missing. C'est la guerre.
Guns lost in Iraq, although very interesting as a comment on military waste and government ineptitude, have nothing to do with the gun flow in the U.S.
ReplyDelete