Guns and Crime
by Bob Barr

Atlanta suffers from a rate of violent crime about four times the national average; murders take place in the city at a rate about five times the nation's average. The reasons Atlanta's crime statistics remain stubbornly high are many and persistent, but criminologists and law enforcement experts know that none of them is the fault of the National Rifle Association.

Yet, Atlanta police Chief Richard Pennington was at the National Press Club in Washington recently offering sound bites and photo ops with the anti-gun lobby organization, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, blaming the city's sorry crime statistics on the NRA.

Taking potshots at the NRA has become a time-worn practice of big city mayors such as New York's Michael Bloomberg. While one expects liberal politicians in northeastern cities to curry favor by leveling broadsides at the NRA, it is surprising to find their ranks joined by a police chief from Atlanta, the capital of a state with a long and positive relationship with the NRA.

In fact, just a month ago Gov. Sonny Perdue proudly received NRA's endorsement. Officeholders and aspirants across Georgia's 159 counties eagerly vie for NRA's endorsement every election cycle. In a state with significant numbers of hunters and sports shooters — a state that boasts innumerable law enforcement officers who have benefited directly from NRA-sponsored firearms training — why has Atlanta's police chief jumped in bed with the national anti-gun lobby?

Politics and political agendas are always difficult to discern, and I don't pretend to know those that motivate Pennington. I also know that, despite Atlanta's less-than-stellar crime statistics, Pennington has, since being appointed in July 2002, made real strides redirecting police resources to areas in the city to increase their impact.

Whatever his motives for taking up with the national anti-firearms lobby, the material Pennington's new-found friends at the Brady Center are pushing is simply political pap of the sort the center has been espousing every election cycle for more than a decade.

For example, the Brady Center blasts the NRA for supporting legislation pending before the Congress that would reform the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and strengthen privacy protections for individuals' firearms purchase records.

The Brady Center and its cheerleaders mischaracterize these pending legislative efforts as "tying the hands" of the ATF and other law enforcement agencies, but the actual terms of the legislation show otherwise. The ATF reform bill modernizes the agency's ability to address infractions of the myriad federal firearms regulations governing firearms retailers. To be sure, the legislation contains measures to guard against regulatory abuses by ATF such as were detailed in a public congressional hearing earlier this year. However, it also aims to more effectively focus and prioritize the agency's efforts against true violations of firearms, explosives and arson laws.

While Pennington has bought into the Brady Center's resistance to ATF reform and blames the NRA for violent crime in Atlanta, a significant majority of Georgia's congressional delegation — including Democrats John Barrow, Sanford Bishop and Jim Marshall — voted "aye" (along with 274 others) on the legislation. It defies reason to conclude, as Pennington apparently has, that all these Democrats and Republicans are conspiring against him and coddling violent offenders.

Another part of the firearms legislative package backed by the NRA and with which Pennington takes umbrage would strengthen protections against improper release of citizens' firearms purchase records. Important, but contrary to the Brady Center's rhetoric, the legislation still allows full access by law enforcement to obtain firearms records for any legitimate investigations. This bill, too, enjoys broad bipartisan support, including among the Georgia delegation.

Of course, those echoing the Brady Center's anti-NRA diatribe have little to offer the debate other than boilerplate sound bites, when confronted with hard statistics, such as those released in September by the FBI, showing the nation's violent crime rate in 2005 — despite an uptick for the year — was nearly 40 percent below that in 1991 when it hit an all-time high, even as the number of privately owned firearms during that period increased significantly.

Thus, while the evidence clearly shows that broader civilian ownership of firearms translates into less, not more, violent crime in America, and even as members of Congress of both political parties support efforts to reform and streamline federal firearms regulatory efforts, the anti-firearms crowd that apparently now includes Atlanta's police chief prefers hollow rhetoric to cooperative action.

Former Congressman and U.S. Attorney Bob Barr practices law in Atlanta. Web site: www.bobbarr.org