June 12, 2003
Unlikely Allies Seek Better Enforcement of Firearms Statutes
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
 ASHINGTON,
June 11 — In an unlikely tandem, gun-control groups and a
congressman who has long supported gun rights are pressuring the
Justice Department to become more aggressive in prosecuting
weapons crimes.
Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, a vocal
backer of the Second Amendment, wrote to Attorney General John
Ashcroft last week demanding to know "how the Justice
Department plans to improve its abysmal record of enforcement of
all of the major federal firearms statutes."
Mr. Ashcroft has made tougher enforcement of gun laws one of
his top priorities. He argues that enforcement — not more laws
— is the key to stopping gun violence.
"Our message to armed criminals is unambiguous,"
Mr. Ashcroft said earlier this year. "No more slipping
through the cracks."
Mr. Ashcroft's advisers point to a 38 percent increase in
prosecutions of gun crimes since 2001 as evidence of his
success.
But the sharply worded attack by Mr. Dingell on the Justice
Department's record could signal a significant bellwether
because of the congressman's reputation as a passionate defender
of gun rights. A lifelong member of the National Rifle
Association, Mr. Dingell has been an influential voice in the
House for years in repelling gun-control measures that he
considered unnecessary.
Now, however, Mr. Dingell finds himself aligned with
gun-control groups like Americans for Gun Safety, a
Washington-based lobby that put out a study last month
concluding that only 2 percent of federal gun crimes result in
prosecutions.
"People who are gung ho for gun control and people who
are totally opposed to it all respond the same way: gun laws
need to be enforced," Mr. Dingell said in an interview.
"The N.R.A. feels that way, moderate gun-control folks feel
that way. We can all agree on that."
The debate over how effectively firearms laws are enforced
comes at a time when gun control has resurfaced as a political
issue.
The supporters of gun rights are pushing legislation that
would protect firearms manufacturers from liability in lawsuits.
Supporters of gun control, meanwhile, are seeking to impose new
regulations on design and manufacture of guns, and they are also
seeking to extend a 1994 ban on the sale of assault-style
weapons. President Bush supports the ban, but the N.R.A. and
many Republicans have vowed to defeat it.
More aggressive enforcement of gun laws has been a rallying
point for the advocates of gun rights. Mr. Dingell, who said he
would probably oppose the reauthorization of the assault ban,
said better enforcement was one way of staving off further
gun-control measures. "We'd see a lot less pressure for a
lot of these unwise gun-control laws that are so hurtful to
sportsmen," he said.
Mr. Bush, in campaigning for the White House, said he, too,
wanted to bolster lax enforcement of gun laws, a problem that
has helped give the United States the highest gun casualty rate
in the world.
Mr. Ashcroft, like Mr. Dingell a strong supporter of the
Second Amendment, has defended and even broadened the Justice
Department's view of the legal rights of law-abiding gun owners,
and he has focused enforcement efforts on locking up criminals
who use guns. Prosecutions of felons who own guns illegally and
people who use firearms in a crime make up a large share of the
38 percent increase in cases brought under Mr. Ashcroft.
But both the study by Americans for Gun Safety and a second
study last month by a group at Syracuse University concluded
that the authorities have paid scant attention to illegal gun
dealers, black market dealers and others.
Americans for Gun Safety said the Justice Department could
claim noticeable percentage increases in bringing some gun
charges only because the numbers were so low in the first place.
For instance, the Justice Department said prosecutions of
people who make false statements in trying to buy a gun have
surged 43 percent since 1999. But Americans for Gun Safety said
fewer than 578 prosecutions were brought last year out of an
estimated 150,000 violations, meaning that 99.6 percent of the
violations go unpunished.
Mr. Dingell, in his letter to the attorney general, said he
found the study "alarming," and he said he was
particularly troubled that "despite your assurances to the
contrary," people who lie on gun background checks are
prosecuted infrequently. In Michigan, he said, 11,000 people
lied on gun background checks in the last several years, but
federal prosecutors brought charges only 18 times.
Justice Department officials said Mr. Ashcroft had sought to
step up prosecutions aggressively in such cases, but the
findings of the two recent studies appear to have thrown the
department on the defensive.
The findings have prompted the Justice Department to send a
seven-page memorandum to prosecutors around the country to use
in rebutting the studies. "Disregarding our record-setting
work to prosecute and convict criminals who misuse firearms
demonstrates a fundamental disregard for the facts about the
department's efforts to ensure safer neighborhoods,"
officials wrote in the memorandum.
Gun-control groups said they believed that Mr. Dingell's
strong stance on the enforcement issue could help tip the
debate.
"When you have someone like John Dingell speaking
out," said Matt Bennett of Americans for Gun Safety,
"it becomes crystal clear that even very strong proponents
of gun rights are interested in toughened enforcement."
Peter Hamm, a spokesman for the Brady Campaign, another gun
control group, said, "We think John Dingell is usually, if
not always, wrong on gun laws and safety issue, but on
enforcement, he's right."
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