> 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.
I think the AFT could extrapolate from there. My understanding is that traces result in identification of the retailer. The ATF knows how many licensed retailers there are, and the number of guns sold. So I think they could calculate the cited number. > 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. An added quirk: Many retailers are also wholesalers, and often the distinction is lost in calculations. In the San Francisco Bay Area, there is a company (Traders) that is a both a wholesaling and retailing outfit. As firearms pass _through_ their operation, some end up being retailed to criminals elsewhere. Some anti-gun groups chose to ignore this subtlety and claimed that Traders was the biggest retailer of crime guns. It would not surprise me to discover the ATF did the same either maliciously or through sloppy trace checking. > 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. One can never be too cynical (http://www.cynical.ws/wordsearch.php?word=gun). However, it tends to make sense that a few bad actors with FFL's are likely the source of many/most crime guns, just as a handful of repeat offenders are the source of most violent crime. If so stipulated, then policy is clear - identify and prosecute the few. ----------------- Guy Smith Author, Gun Facts www.GunFacts.info [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ To post, send message to [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/firearmsregprof Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
