So I’ve finally finished my covering violence project — Accepting Defeat. You can check it out here.
I’ve posted this feature because I think one issue “at stake” with the election that we haven’t talked about is gun control. When Democrats had control of the house in the early 1990s, they made gun control one of their biggest priorities. When the Republicans took it over in 1994, they made preserving the rights of gun owners (and gun manufacturers) their priority. In 2003, congress passed the “Tiahrt Amendment,” which prohibited the ATF from making gun tracing data public. Later, the amendment would be modified to include a section limiting what data the ATF could share with the police. It even banned the police from sharing the same data with other local law enforcement agencies. (You can read more about it here.)
It’s a given that no matter who wins the Democratic nomination, he/she won’t be speaking about gun control on the campaign trail. But if he/she is elected into office, will he/she pick up the cause again? It’s needed, especially here in Alameda county, where the homicide counts are reaching record levels and the majority of them are caused by guns. Or will the new president wuss out and let untraceable guns spread like a virus across the nation?
Something needs to happen.
1 response so far ↓
1 Ace // Mar 12, 2008 at 6:42 am
Interesting visual.
Are you implying that the Thompson submachinegun is the weapon of choice in Alameda County crime? Can you provide statistics that the Thompson has actually be used in a crime in Alameda County?
Or are you simply using the popular connection of Tommy Gun equals Al Capone equals old gangster movies equals gangsters equals gangs equals crime?
Why not go after the perpetrator of the crime rather than the tool used in the crime?
As for Tiahrt–per the 16 June 2006 Congressional Research Service report “Gun Control: Statutory Disclosure Limitations on ATF Firearms Trace Data and Multiple Handgun Sales Reports (page 3)”:
“…firearm trace data may be biased: consequently, such data cannot be used to test for statistical significance between firearm traces in general and the wider population of firearms available to criminals or the wider American public. Neither the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) — the principal federal agency charged with the collection of national crime statistics — nor ATF has endorsed the use of firearm trace data for any purpose other than advancing compliance with firearms commerce laws and bona fide criminal investigations. In conclusion, the ATF firearms trace database is an operational system designed to aid in ongoing investigations, rather than a system to capture ‘crime gun’ statistics.”
Leave a Comment