7,000-plus Americans bought weapons illegally
More than 7,000 people who should have been barred from buying guns were able to buy them in 2002 and 2003, according to a US Justice Department review.
The US government rarely prosecuted such cases, said the report.
The law stipulates that gun buyers might have to wait up to three business days before receiving their weapons. Under a system of instant FBI background checks instituted in 1998, most sales are approved much more quickly. Of the 17 million gun purchases in the last two years, 122,000 were denied because of the checks.
If the background check is not completed within the period, however, the law says the purchase must go through. In 2002 and 2003, there were a combined 7,030 “delayed denial” cases in which the FBI found that a prohibited person was able to get a gun after the period expired, according to the review by Glenn Fine, the justice department’s inspector general.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives retrieved the weapon in 97% of those cases. That sometimes took a year or longer, ample time for an illegal buyer to use the gun to commit a crime.
The study did not say how many times that occurred but provided some examples, including an instance in which a prohibited buyer was charged with aggravated assault after firing the illegally-purchased weapon at another personÂ’s car.
Several reasons were cited by ATF for its failure to retrieve the guns more quickly, including staffing shortages, technology problems and lack of adequate timeliness standards. The review also found that ATF agents did not consider it a priority to track down the illegal gun purchasers because they are not viewed as dangerous.
“We were also told that ‘bad guys’ generally do not purchase their firearms through legitimate dealers” but instead do so illegally, at unregulated gun shows, flea markets or through other means, the review said.
The study also found that federal prosecutors brought charges in only 154 of the 122,000 illegal purchase cases.
Many US lawyers believed cases were difficult to bring to a jury, the review said, partly because a denial could occur because of seemingly minor offences that happened long ago. Examples include a man who had stolen a pig in 1941, a person convicted of cheque forgery in 1959 and someone with an attempted burglary conviction dating to 1963.
Fine said in the study, however, that “because someone has committed only non-violent crimes in the past does not mean that he or she is not capable of using the illegally-obtained firearm to commit a violent crime”.
The review was the second in as many weeks by Fine that was critical of the ATF, which last year moved from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department. A review last week said the ATF was unable to meet its own annual goals for checking that the nationÂ’s gun dealers complied with federal gun laws.
