At 9:08 AM -0800 11/9/05, Volokh, Eugene wrote:
The ATF's Commerce in Firearms in the United States (2000)
famously reports that "57% of crime guns traced by the BATF sold through
1% of gun dealers." Does anyone know off-hand what fraction of all gun
sales those dealers account for? Obviously, if those 1% accounted for
50% of all gun sales, then the 57% number wouldn't be particularly
telling; if the 1% accounted for only 1% of all gun sales (but 57% of
sales of all crime guns that the BATF traces), that might be different
-- it wouldn't, in my view, justify holding manufacturers liable for
selling to those dealers, but it may (at least) justify more
investigation of the dealers and the like.
1. I doubt ATFE even has figures on dealer sales. Dealers are only
obligated to turn in records when they go out of business. ATF knows
of the traces, because those start with inquiries to ATF. They know
of total manufactures, since that's reported. But dealership sales
are not reported, to my knowledge.
2. I rather suspect that your explanation is the correct one, or a
large part of it. In Tucson (pop. around half a million) there was
historically one big dealership, maybe a dozen much smaller ones, and
probably a few hundred "selling from home" FFLs. Today it's more like
2-3 big ones and fewer selling from home operations. Either way, I
wouldn't be surprised if the big dealership in its prime was selling
50-60% of all new guns sold in the county, the smaller dealerships
30%, and the home dealerships under 10%, and that even completely
random traces would reflect that -- one dealer out of more than a
hundred would account for 50-60% of traces.
3. The simple way to test the hypothesis would be for someone to
propose, during appropriations hearings, that the ATFE figures
obviously prove they only need enough inspectors to annually audit
that 1% of dealers who are the problem. I suspect you would get a
very quick explanation of why the "1%=57% of problem" is not valid
mathematics. Of course, I may be too cynical.
--
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