NYC authorities: 2 men from Carolinas smuggled guns on discount buses; 17 others also charged
Source: Washington Post
NEW YORK — A pair of gunrunners smuggled firearms into New York City by hiding them in luggage they carried on discount buses offering cheap fares and lesser odds of getting caught, authorities said Monday.
The men were caught in a police sting that netted 254 weapons in 45 transactions since last year — the largest total from a gun case in recent memory. One of the guns was an assault rifle that was disassembled and transported in a girlfriend’s zebra-striped bag, authorities said.
The alleged smugglers, Walter Walker and Earl Campbell, were among 19 people arrested in New York, North Carolina and South Carolina as the result of a 10-month investigation. Also charged was an operator of a Brooklyn music recording studio where authorities said some of the deals took place.
Officials from the New York Police Department and the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor announced the arrests Monday, citing it as another example of a persistent black market in which guns from the South can sell for three times their original price in the city.
Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/nyc-authorities-2-men-from-carolinas-smuggled-guns-on-discount-buses-17-others-also-charged/2013/08/19/374404f2-08e6-11e3-89fe-abb4a5067014_story.html
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Last edited Mon Aug 19, 2013, 10:29 PM - Edit history (1)
There is no need to title it, if you keep it on your own property AND haul it on the highways on a flatbed. If you think about it, a Car title is more like a License to Carry, then the registration of the weapon.
Remember, you can own a car without registering it with the state, as long as you understand it is NOT to run on any public road. Your name goes on a list of gun owners as soon as you buy the weapon. Another way to look at this, you can build a new car from parts and NOT have to register it, as long as you keep it on private property AND haul it on a flatbed on any public road. On the other hand, by Federal law, if you did the same with a firearm (build it new from parts), you must list it with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Side note: The recent revelation of what the NSA has been doing, clearly shows that if you used a Credit Card to buy a weapon OR ammunition for that weapon in the last 20 years, it will take about 10 seconds to find you out, and your address (and most of that time will be for the computer operator to finish his cup of coffee). This can be done using privately collected data, all the Government has to do is demand the data from the credit card companies (and such companies will give it over in a heartbeat).
My state has even discuss abolishing register of automobiles for this reason (i.e. it serve no purpose when it comes to determining who owns something that can be be determined otherwise). The State's biggest concern is the lost of revenue if and when they do it (the reason registration, annual license plate renewal and even driving license renewal is maintained is to get money for the State Highway Department, nothing else).
As to pistols, Police Officers have told me it takes no more then 15 minutes to trace a pistol OR to find out if someone owns a Pistol. Rifle and shotgun records are harder to obtain, but given they are used rarer in murder then Knives, clubs and other blunt instruments (and barely beats out hands, fists and feet) the issue of why keeping the records keeps coming up (i.e. is if cost efficient? given the low rate of use of Rifles and Shotguns in Crime?).
Thus the debate over more registration then we have at present quickly comes to a moot point. If it is a pistol, tracing it can be done quickly. As can whether a person has purchased a pistol legally. The problem is illegal guns, guns that end up in the hands of criminals. Increase registration would not affect these weapons. A call for a requirement that any stolen weapon be reported to police has been made, the leading objection to this is what if the Police do not want to take such reports? Or worse, takes them and quickly forgets about the report (Which happens to most reports of theft)? Why should people be REQUIRED to report something stolen? That is NOT a requirement for any other item (including drugs, except by manufacturers and distributors of drugs AND firearms who must make such reports).
Furthermore, given today's ability for identity theft, what if the weapon is traced back to someone who did not buy the weapon? Worse, what if the person is dead, how do you punish that person?
Sorry, the problem has been and continues to be pistols. These are the first choice of criminals. Most states require pistols to be sold through gun dealers or sheriff's offices, most states do not make that requirement of rifles or shotguns, given they low use in crime. Regulations on Pistols exceed the regulations on the transferring of automobiles as do the legal requirements. In many ways, you are advocating what is the law. You complaint is that people work around the law all the time (that is why they are called "Criminals"
. Given the high profit margins on illegal pistols (They exceed the price of drugs by a large amount) stopping the flow will be hard to do.
Like most real solutions to almost anything, you have to attack both the supply AND the demand sides. The better solution would be to trace back a weapon to its last legal owner and determine how that owner lost it. I have had people tell me they owned a weapon, that had been stolen months, sometimes years before. They had it in a safe place, locked away, but some teenage nephew (the #1 Burglaries of most people's home) stole it without they knowing it (ask yourself, if someone stole a little used pan from your kitchen, when would you notice it was stolen? How about a little used rake in your tool shed?, I have seen people who own pistols who used a rake or a little use pan more then their pistol and would miss the rake or the pan while before they missed their pistol).
Sorry, punishing someone for not reporting what they did not know was stolen would be a waste of time. How does that affect other similar situations? i.e. people not reporting crimes they must report, but crimes they did NOT know occurred? You quickly get into circular logic that clearly shows how stupid such a requirement can become. Now, I would like to see a tax on pistols to pay for tracking them but you have to make it clear that such a tax will NOT extend to Rifles or Shotguns under any circumstances (and the main circumstances may be to increase funds to keep track of illegal pistols, for the funds from pistols may not be enough to fund the tracking of pistols, i.e. you have to commit NOT to spread the cost of tracking pistols to all firearms AND KEEP THAT PROMISE, even if it means a lack of funds for tracking pistols).
You have to address the fear of most firearms owners that a restriction or tax on Pistols will be extended to rifles and shotguns (the 80% of owners who do NOT own a pistol, remember prior to 1970 only 10% of all firearms sales were pistols, it has only increased to 40% since 1970 and most rifles and shotguns can last 100-150 years depending on how often they are fired, thus a lot of people own older weapons, and most of those older weapons are rifles and shotguns). If you address they concern, you can then get a larger group of people to support gun controls as to pistols. It is pistols that is killing Americans not rifles or shotguns and further restrictions on Pistols would address the issue of supply.
Demand is a little harder. One way is to legalize marijuana. Marijuana is a "Milk and Bread" of the drug trade. "Milk and Bread" is a reference to the concept of what most people go to a grocery to get, Milk and Bread. Most other items are after thoughts in comparison. Thus a local grocer always made sure his milk and break were to the rear of the store, so people past everything else he had for sale. The other items were higher profit, but not what most people go to the local grocer to get (Yes, a lot of people today, avoid milk and bread, but we are talking marketing, not what is in fashion today).
The hard drugs (Cocaine, Heroin, prescription drugs etc) have higher profit margins then Marijuana but it is Marijuana that is the steady seller (like break and milk in the classic grocery store above). Legal Marijuana takes out that steady seller, and a lot of hard drug dealers will lose the "drug" "grocery" store. With that removal, such sellers of Marijuana can defend they "territory" through the courts not by shooting each other, thus the demand for illegal firearms will drop.
Another avenue to reduce demand, is to reduce the sentence for possession if certain firearms are used instead of others. For example a lot of Police fear being out gunned by criminals, so most have adopted automatics for increase fire power. Given that most police shooing involved only two shots, this is excessive but the Police feel they have to make the fire power criminals have. Thus a lesser sentence if a Revolver is used for encourage the use of revolvers and reduce the demand for automatics among criminals. Presently you get the same sentence if you use a 15 round automatic or a single shot pistol, thus most criminals have an incentive to go for high capacity automatics, just like the Police.
Just comments to reduce the demand for weapons. You have to address the issue of demand, for as long as the demand for illegal weapons exists, they will be supplied by someone. You reduce the demand by forcing up the price, but that often requires subsiding alternatives that are less deadly but will substitute for pistols. Thus my call for a reduce sentence of someone uses a revolver over someone using an automatic. Just like making Marijuana legal nationally will reduce the demand, so would laws that encourage the use of less deadly weapons. Remember most criminals do NOT want to use they weapons against police, they want to use them against other criminals moving against them (i.e. Drug dealers) OR against someone they want to rob. Thus my proposal for a reduction of an sentence for the use of Revolvers over Automatics Pistols, to encourage the use of Revolvers with their six shots in place of automatics that can have up to 15 shots.
You have to address why people are buying these illegal pistols, not just ignore the subject and hope they will stop. Demand for illegal pistols have to be addressed and no one is actually addressing it for it means accepting the concern of the poor and often concerns of ex-cons. These are unpopular people and thus their concerns tends to be ignored but they concern has to be addressed to solve the problem of demands for illegal guns.
Or maybe I should have just said something dumb like guns kill people.
nice analogy.
