I know some readers are upset when I use the phrase “gun pushers.” Still, this term seems to be an apt description of the smugglers, dealers, and shills (along with their apologists) who are willing to do almost anything to make a dollar selling lethal weapons to people who shouldn’t be armed.

There are similarities between gun pushers and drug pushers: they help create and hype demand for dangerous products; they exploit jurisdictional boundaries and loopholes; and they have no regard for the consequences of their actions. Once they pocket their cash, they wash their hands and absolve themselves of responsibility for the havoc they wreak on our communities.

When I was Mayor, I asked my Chief of Police, public safety advisors, local prosecutors, legal experts, and community members to come up with new and innovative ways of stopping the drug pushers. The importance of sharing information was critical to almost all of the ideas we discussed.

Similarly, sharing crime-gun trace data could have an enormous impact. Debates on appropriations riders dealing with this crime-gun trace data can become abstract and arcane, however, to drive home the fact that the gun pushers are separate from legitimate businessmen and legitimate gun owners, and to remind us all of the fact that the gun pushers have a real and devastating impact, I recommend everyone read this in-depth report from the Newark Star-Ledger.

The weapon’s 1,100-mile passage from gun store to killing scene was the work of a small ring of smugglers who helped feed Newark’s lucrative underground arms market. Exploiting Florida’s lenient gun laws, they bought dozens of high-powered pistols to resell on the streets of New Jersey, home to some of the country’s toughest firearm restrictions.

Make no mistake: the gun pushers are usually breaking the laws already on the books, but our law enforcement agencies are shackled or slowed down by underfunding, arbitrary regulatory restrictions, and jurisdictional boundaries. If we want to tackle violent crime without passing new laws, we need to focus on shutting down the illegal gun market, fully funding law enforcement efforts, and removing the restrictions on the sharing of crime data.