1. Brady Center Launches "Gun Industry Watch": A Systematic Program to Expose Practices that Fuel Gun Crime
2. Brady Center Lawsuit Attacks Large-Volume Gun Sales that Supply Traffickers

On March 30, in conjunction with the start of the Campaign Against Illegal Guns, the Brady Center launched Gun Industry Watch, a new systematic research effort to expose the complicity of the gun industry in supplying the illegal market and to investigate particular companies and practices that pose special threats to public safety.

Gun Industry Watch will provide critical research on the illegal gun market by examining such topics as: the identity of gun dealers contributing to the problem; the legal barriers to aggressive ATF regulation of dealers; the gun lobby's success in shutting down public access to crime gun trace information; the connections between the gun industry, the NRA, and gun lobby political contributions.

This effort will build on the work of the Brady Center's Legal Action Project, which has used pretrial discovery from civil lawsuits to uncover powerful evidence of industry complicity in the illegal gun market. In recent years, expert analysts and industry whistleblowers have drawn important links between industry sales and distribution practices and the rapid movement of guns from licensed dealers to criminal hands.

The first issue of Gun Industry Watch will focus on how the gun lobby and the government suppress the truth about guns and crime through their secrecy of hiding crime gun trace data from the public.

The gun that was used to shoot Daniel Williams in the stomach as he played basketball in August 2003 in his Buffalo neighborhood can be traced back from a gang member to a gun trafficker to a reckless gun dealer named Charlie Brown, who sold 87 handguns in one purchase to a trafficker. One of these guns was used to shoot and injure Williams.

In its effort to reform the gun industry, the Brady Legal Action Project, along with co-counsel, filed suit on behalf of Williams against Charlie Brown and the gun companies who negligently enabled gang member Cornell Caldwell to obtain the gun from a known trafficker and shoot Williams.

The gun that Caldwell used to shoot Williams was one of hundreds of guns trafficked to Buffalo from Ohio by notorious gunrunner James Bostic. It was reported that between May and October 2000, Bostic purchased at least 250 guns from gun dealer Charlie Brown, and other gun sellers, at gun shows in Dayton, Ohio. Bostic traveled to Ohio, which, unlike New York, does not require a license to purchase a gun or impose a waiting period, to buy mainly Hi-Point Saturday Night Special handguns for under $100 a piece, then sold them for two to three times the price on the streets of Buffalo.

Brown, a federally licensed gun dealer, sold 190 handguns to Bostic and his straw purchaser even when it should have been obvious that the guns were headed for the streets. In addition to the guns recovered in Buffalo, 630 guns sold by Brown were recovered in connection with crime in New York City. (Read more about this case.)

Charlie Brown and the others like him must be stopped if we are to stem the flow of illegal guns onto the streets of America. Our Campaign Against Illegal Guns calls for strengthening law enforcement tools to crack down on corrupt gun dealers, requiring Brady background checks on all gun sales, and stopping large-volume gun sales that supply traffickers.