I've read the report and I am not amused. While it certainly paints a disturbing picture, it is also written with a clear intention to overstate the problem. How so?
In the nutshell this investigation found that:
1. 19 of 30 private sellers who were subjected to the "integrity test" closed the sale knowing that buyer won't pass a b/ground check. That's 63%.
2. 16 of 17 FFL holders subjected to the test closed apparent straw purchases (94%).
Obvious implication is that a vast majority of the gun show vendors are dishonest and we need more laws to deal with them.
Well, it would have been true if the sellers were selected at random. They weren't. Section "Sellers Approached in the Investigation" (p.14) describes in detail how PI's chose those sellers who were most likely to fail the tests and then approached only those. At each show they spent 1 day screening for the suspects and 1 day testing them. Obviously, a "study design" like that resulted in a vastly inflated number of illegal sales. In fact if PI's did really good job filtering their suspects, the investigation would have proved that all gun show vendors are dishonest. It's just like spotting drug dealers on the street, shaking them down to prove that they are in fact selling drugs and then reporting that every person on the street is a drug dealer.
It's hard to say based on this intentionally biased report how big the problem really is. However the report states (p. 13) that there were 453 vendors (312 private and 141 FFL's) at these shows of which 35 were proven to violate existing laws. Nothing to be happy about but that's 7.7% not 74%.
So, why again do we need more laws? With 40 PI's and $1.8M of NYC taxpayers money, Mayor Bloomberg showed how to deal with the problem using existing laws. Perhaps poor underfunded ATF ($1,028B 2009 budget and 4,900 employees) doesn't have enough resources? Or, maybe, ATF just lacks the will and the leadership to use existing resources to enforce existing laws.
Mike
