The one-year anniversary of a tragic killing from South Bend, Indiana, illustrates many of the weaknesses in our gun laws: in a single incident, we have law enforcement officers being shot and killed, by someone who never should have been allowed to purchase a firearm in the first place, but who still passed a background check because of incomplete records, from a corrupt gun dealer at a gun show.

On April 24, 2007, South Bend Police Corporal Nick Polizzotto was shot and killed, and Patrolman Michael Norby was wounded, in a shootout at the Wooden Indian Motel.

They were shot by a man who had been involuntarily committed to a mental institution and who bought a gun at a gun show from a licensed dealer who later pleaded guilty and is now serving Federal prison time for falsifying Brady background check records.

Worse still, the gun dealer’s dishonesty was only part of the story. Because the states do such a poor job of providing records of the dangerously mentally ill to the Brady background check system, the shooter’s dangerous mental history didn’t prevent him from buying his gun.

The NICS Improvement Act – which gives states monetary incentives to supply records to the Brady background check system – should help prevent other mentally dangerous gun buyers from getting guns in the future from licensed gun dealers who follow the law.

Unlike West Virginia, however, which passed legislation less than a month ago to address this problem, states like Indiana have yet to forward any records of the dangerously mentally ill to NICS.

The following is from a powerful piece that ran last week on South Bend’s CBS affiliate, WSBT-TV. The video is here. You can read more about this tragic story here, here, and here.

A CLOSER LOOK AT THE LAW

It’s been 40 years since Congress banned the sale of firearms to anyone deemed “mentally defective” by a judge, and today, answering “yes” to “question 11-F” on a federal background check means an automatic disqualification for a handgun permit or purchase.

It reads, simply: “Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective or involuntarily committed to a mental institution?”

It’s aimed at preventing scenes like the one that played out on the campus of Virginia Tech just over one year ago. The gunman there, Sung Hui Cho, was responsible for the worst massacre on a college campus in U.S. history.

Court records show Cho was also ordered to receive mental health treatment by a judge who also declared him “dangerously mentally ill.”

But he never went.

Even so, his background check came back clean.

So did Barnaby’s, the day after the gun he bought illegally was used to kill Polizzotto.

Former Bristol firearms dealer Ronald Wedge was sentenced to serve prison time for falsifying information on Barnaby’s application, and allowing him to buy the gun before his background check cleared.

But the fact remains, it did clear.

The question for lawmakers in both Indiana and Virginia one year ago, was why?

SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS

They quickly found that the answers lie in the mental health records kept by each state in the nation. Just over 30 states share some, or all of those records with the federal government. In our area, Illinois recently began sharing many of their records, and Michigan is one of the few states in the country that shares nearly all their records.

But some states share none of their mental health records. That means all records of treatment, including treatment ordered by a court, is not included in the FBI’s NICS database used to check the backgrounds of potential gun buyers.

In other words, in many cases, the FBI has no way of knowing whether or not that buyer has ever had any sign of mental illness.

One year ago, as Scott Barnaby pulled the trigger, Indiana was one of those states.
Today, it still is, and Nick’s brother Tony Polizzotto calls that unacceptable.

“It seems like a no brainer to me,” he said. “Half the states [still] don’t have this law in action. And it’s something that really needs to be brought to the forefront.”

In the wake of Polizzotto’s shooting and the campus shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University, it has been brought to the forefront in the Hoosier state.

Brady Background checks make it harder for dangerous people to get guns, but they only work when the states send in the proper information. Indiana – indeed, most of the country – needs to do a much better job in reporting those who have been defined as “prohibited purchasers� by Federal law since 1968 to this database.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

That was the headline, two days before Halloween, when the Washington Post turned over an ugly rock too long ignored by our elected officials.

Now, a whole host of terrifying facts about gun shows in America have crawled out. In a nutshell, this report says that Mexican gangsters are at war, and they’re shooting each other with guns bought in unregulated sales at American gun shows. To do it, the gangsters exploit what is known as the gun show loophole. They find so-called “private sellers� at gun shows, who can sell whole arsenals of weapons without ever running a background check.

Here are a few of the most powerful quotes from the article:

• “…unlicensed sellers can sell ‘personal collections’ at weekend gun shows without background checks.â€�

• “…unscrupulous sellers and buyers have taken advantage of the system … setting up phony personal collections booths and making quick sales that are difficult to trace.â€�

• “Arizona and Texas have become a ‘gunrunner’s paradise’….â€�

• “…arms traffickers have left Mexico awash in AK-47s, pistols, telescope sighting devices, grenades, grenade launchers and high-powered ammunition, such as the so-called cop-killer bullets believed to be able to penetrate bulletproof vests.â€�

• “Among the new weapons of choice for Mexican drug dealers are so-called variants of AK-47s and AR-15 assault rifles….â€�

• “An AK-47 that sells for $200 to $800 at an Arizona gun show can be sold for four times that much in Mexico….â€�

• “‘You’re looking at the same firepower here on the border that our soldiers are facing in Iraq and Afghanistan’….â€�

• “…law enforcement officers on both sides of the border have never seen anything like the flood of guns now surging into Mexico.â€�

Drugs from Mexico come in, and American guns go out.

What’s Washington’s answer? The report says that President Bush has “proposed [a] $500 million U.S. aid package to help Mexico battle [drug] cartels.� That’s right: according to the article, we could be sending the Mexican government half a billion dollars to fight Mexican drug gangs armed with guns bought right here in America. But that’s plainly slamming the door shut after the horse has left the barn.

Remember: unregulated gun show sales are how Eric Harris and Dylan Kleybold got their guns before they murdered 12 and wounded 22 others at Columbine High School. It’s how Michael Fortier – an accomplice of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh – sold many of the guns they stole from an Arkansas gun collector. It’s how Ali Boumelhem – a member of the terrorist group Hezbollah – bought an arsenal of shotguns, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, flash suppressors and assault weapons parts for export to Lebanon. And it’s how Muhammad Navid Asrar – who may also have had a link to al-Qaeda – bought an arsenal of his own, “including a Sten submachine gun, a Ruger Mini-14 rifle, two pistols and a hunting rifle.�

These are just some of the highest-profile examples, but it doesn’t have to be this way. We should never have to read about another school shooting fueled by an unregulated gun show sale. We should never have to read about another accused terrorist arming himself at a gun show. We should never have to read about how gun shows in America arm the drug gangs in Mexico.

Enough already.

The Washington Post article should spur our elected officials to answer a few basic questions:

• Why do the President and Congress permit gun shows in America to arm Mexican drug gangs?

• How can the gun lobby defend these disgraceful business practices as they continue their efforts to keep the gun show loophole open?

• What will it take for the President and Congress to stare down the gun pushers and close the gun show loophole, once-and-for-all?

Now is the time to act: Require a background check for every single gun sale in America. We make it too easy for dangerous people to get dangerous weapons.

No background check? No sale. NO EXCEPTIONS.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

The Indiana Court of Appeals handed an significant victory to the City of Gary on Monday. In fact, anyone in Indiana who has suffered from the unlawful distribution of guns to criminals and gun traffickers because of the practices of the gun industry has reason to cheer.

In a unanimous 3-0 decision [pdf document], the Indiana Court of Appeals decided that the City of Gary can sue gun manufacturers who allegedly funnel guns into the criminal market for creating a public nuisance under Indiana law. Put simply, when gun industry practices injure the public, it should be held accountable. That’s a common-sense idea, and the Court agreed.

It was a significant blow to the gun lobby, since the Indiana Court found that Gary’s lawsuit falls squarely within an exception to a Federal law called the “Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act� (PLCAA). The gun manufacturers argued that even bad business practices should be shielded from accountability by the PLCAA.

But because they failed to convince any of the three judges, the people of Gary, Indiana may soon have their day in court.

It is important to remember that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has shown [pdf document, at page 2] that just 1.2 % of licensed gun dealers account for about 57 % of all guns traced to crime. All of the gun dealers being sued [pdf document] in this case fall into that questionable 1.2% [pdf document].

Furthermore, the gun industry should know exactly who these shady dealers are. If they don’t, they only have to ask the ATF. Or, in the Gary case specifically, they could just watch the videotaped stings of gun dealers that were filmed by the City of Gary Police Department.

Once the gun manufacturers separate the corrupt dealers from the honest ones, they should stop retailing through corrupt dealers altogether. Otherwise, manufacturers know that a huge percentage of their products – dangerous weapons – will wind up in illegal hands. And if that happens, they should be held accountable.

Gun manufacturers shouldn’t wait to be sued to do the right thing. We should all challenge the industry to review its practices to help prevent dangerous people from getting dangerous weapons.

That will make things safer for all of us. And it’s just good business.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

California police got some welcome news this weekend.

On Saturday, October 13, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger sided with over 65 police chiefs, sheriffs and police organizations – representing cities and towns across the state of California – and signed the Crime Gun Identification Act of 2007 into law. This bill requires that, by 2010, all semi-automatic handguns sold in the state of California be fitted with a technology to help police officers solve gun crimes faster – even when the gun is unavailable.

A fuller discussion of this technology, called “microstamping,� is available here [.wmv file] in an excellent video presentation, as well as in a blog entry I posted back in August. In a nutshell, a firearm that is fitted with the technology has microscopic marks of the make, model and serial number of the weapon engraved on the firing pin, as well as other parts inside the weapon. Each time the handgun is fired, these engravings are impressed on the primer cap and other parts of the shell casing. These shell-casing marks are then visible under a scanning electron microscope – standard equipment used in almost all crime labs.

Approximately 45% of all homicides in California go unsolved due to lack of evidence. Roughly 60% of homicides in California are committed with handguns, according to 2004 data, and about 70% of new handguns sold in California are semi-automatic. Oftentimes, the only evidence left behind at the scene of a gun crime are the shell casings. No gun to be found. The Crime Gun Identification Act is targeted at precisely this problem. Now, police will be able to use shell casings that the gun fired – marked with the make, model and serial number of the weapon – to trace the gun back to its first purchaser. That means more gun crimes solved – and fewer criminals on the street.

The Brady Campaign was proud to help the determined efforts of Assemblyman Mike Feuer (D-42) and our California Brady Chapters, and join the overwhelming law enforcement support of this bill, including: the California Police Chiefs Association, the Orange County Chiefs’ and Sheriff’s Association, the Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC), and the Los Angeles Police Protective League, in addition to 65 police chiefs and sheriffs throughout the state.

Sadly, the gun lobby – led the National Rifle Association, the gun manufacturers’ trade association, and the extremist Gun Owners of California – fought bitterly to kill this bill. But Gov. Schwarzenegger saw past all that and found the clear preference of California police.

The choice was simple.

In his signing message, the Governor reaffirmed that “Public safety is one of the most important roles of government� and he is right. As a former mayor, I had the same duty to protect the public safety of my city and support police officers in their difficult work. It is gratifying to see a fellow Republican stand up to the gun lobby, support the needs of law enforcement, and do what’s right for the people who elected him.

Saturday was indeed a good day for law enforcement – and for the people of California.

*

Note that tomorrow is the six-month anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre. Survivors and surviving family members will make a trip to Capitol Hill here in Washington, D.C. tomorrow morning, and urge passage of the NICS Improvement Act (H.R. 2640), a bill designed to fill gaps in the Brady background check law that allowed the Virginia Tech killer to get his guns from gun stores. I will post a blog some time after the families’ presentation is finished and describe the day’s events.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)

Some of us think to ourselves, “It can’t happen to me,� or, “It can’t happen here.� We think, “I’m a good person and I don’t hurt anybody. I live in a safe neighborhood. I couldn’t possibly be a gunshot victim, and neither could my family. It can’t happen to me.�

Except that it can. Just ask Lance Haver.

About a year ago, I attended an anti-gun violence rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that Lance was instrumental in organizing. A longtime advocate of common-sense gun laws, Lance is a man who has worked much of his life helping to make all Pennsylvanians safer by pushing for strong gun policy in his state. He is someone who labors tirelessly behind the scenes against gun violence.

What’s more, Lance happens to be the city of Philadelphia’s Director of Consumer Affairs, an advocate on behalf of regular people who otherwise lack the power or wherewithal to speak to government leaders. His wife, Lisa, is a teacher in the Philadelphia public schools. In many ways, they represent the typical American middle-class family. Yet they are atypical in their unparalleled dedication to public service.

And then, on September 22, their family life was shattered by a man who walked up to their adopted son, Daren Dieter, and shot him in the spine. The shooter left Daren in a parking lot in Philadelphia, paralyzed from the neck down. Daren happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, a young man simply trying to buy a late-night snack for himself and his date.

Now he’s permanently attached to a respirator.

It can’t happen to you?

America suffers over 10,000 gun murders and 17,000 gun suicides every year. Hundreds of thousands of regular Americans are victims of violent gun crime annually, and the country has now suffered the first two-year national violent crime increase in over a decade. Every day we see or hear or read about another senseless gun injury or death. We can no longer assume that it can’t happen to us. We can no longer shut our eyes and hope that other innocent people like Daren Dieter won’t be shot every single day. Condolences aren’t enough.

It is time for us to ask ourselves why we let this slaughter continue, and what we are going to do to stop it.

To begin, we can remember our traditional obligations to one another, and choose to be our brother’s and our sister’s keeper. We have to realize that when gun tragedy strikes one of the Daren Dieters of the world, it affects us all. And then we must come together to stop those who help put illegal guns into criminal hands in the first place: “Hear No Evil� gun manufacturers, “See No Evil� corrupt gun dealers, and “Speak No Evil� politicians in Washington who have been in the hold of the gun lobby for far too long.

Common-sense gun laws are favored by a vast majority of Americans and would do much to alleviate the real-life threat of illegal guns in this country. It is up to all of us to push to get those laws enacted, in spite of the gun lobby’s most strident efforts. This was Lance Haver’s fight long before his son was shot, and it’s even more his fight now.

It’s our fight, too.

Stay strong, Lance, and know that our prayers are with you.

(Note to readers: This entry, along with past entries, has been co-posted on bradycampaign.org/blog and the Huffington Post.)