Healy applauds gun data sharing

by The Associated Press
Wednesday August 15, 2007, 2:29 PM

Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy, who has been among the leaders in a nationwide effort to release federal gun trace data to local officials, applauded today an agreement between the state and federal governments that allows Trenton to access that data.

"We are pleased to see there has been an agreement reached between the governor's office and the federal represenative because the fight has had to come from the local level," Healy said. "It should have orginated at the federal level. Localities such as Jersy City and other big cities have had to be very creative to deal with this plague. Local efforts are finally paying off,"


He was responding to an agreement announced today by Gov. Jon Corzine that the state will begin quickly tracking illegal firearms thanks to a federal weapons database.

"Gun violence in New Jersey and across America is stealing young lives and killing innocent people,'' Corzine said at New Jersey State Police headquarters. "Together, we must all do more to provide security for our communities and families.''

Officials declared the agreement to use the database a first between a state and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

Police expect to use eTrace, a database established by the ATF to quickly track the ownership history of guns used in crimes. The database lists a firearm's first purchaser, date of purchase and the retailer from which it was purchased.

The information is compiled from gun records provided by local police departments, but has only been accessible by the ATF and the police department that provided it.

Under the agreement, state police personnel will be available round-the-clock daily to identify purchasers, states where purchased, vendors, types of weapons, dates of first purchases and individuals trafficking firearms.

Milgram said she issued a directive today to all police departments in the state to require them to forward all gun tracing information to eTrace so the information can be shared by all state law enforcement.

Corzine said he also asked the state police superintendent, Col. Rick Fuentes, to contact law enforcement agencies throughout the Northeast to encourage them to enter into similar agreements with ATF.

The announcement came on the heels of the investigation into the Aug. 4 execution-style killings in Newark. Three suspects have been arrested and charged in the case that has shone a national spotlight on Newark's high murder rate.

It is unclear how this affects the federal Tiahrt Amendment, a provision in federal law that prohibits the ATF from sharing certain kinds of gun trace data with local governments and police departments.

Healy and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg have led a nationwide campaign to repeal the Tiahrt Amendment.

They can lie and lie and lie but the firearms trace data is freely available to legitimate law enforcement. What Bloomberg et al want is a fishing expedition that will allow class action suits against gun shops. It would also allow NYC to have a master list of firearms owners.

The lilliputian totalitarian is barking up the wrong tree if he ever wants to run for higher office.

Quote:

I hate to sound like a NRA type, but ...

In this town it's not the availabilty of guns that's the problem. The savages who roam our streets will gladly kill or disable you with clubs, knives, fists or whatever other mechanism comes to their minds at the moment.

Healy likes to demagogue this issue. He thinks it makes him look like a real Mayor. Everyone in the City knows better.

We should arm the local women so they can protect themselves from Healy's drunken advances......

Healy: Gun data, not excuses!

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy took aim yesterday at the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee for failing Wednesday to vote down an amendment that restricts the amount of gun trace data the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives can share with local enforcement.

Known as the Tiahrt Amendment, the law restricts the information that can be shared with local law enforcement to the investigation of specific crimes. Critics say more general data would be enough.

The nationwide Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which includes Healy and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, had set its sights on getting the amendment defeated this year.

"New Jersey and Jersey City have strict gun laws," Healy said. "But without the ability to see where the illegal guns used to commit crimes in Jersey City are purchased, we are at a major disadvantage, and the elected officials who support such restrictions are doing the public a grave disservice."

Healy is also championing a "one-gun-a-month" law in New Jersey.

That bill cleared the Assembly in June and Healy expressed confidence it will receive Senate approval when the Legislature reconvenes Tuesday.

KEN THORBOURNE

Taking on the NRA

June 28, 2007
Baltimore Sun

Through its influence and lobbying in Washington, the National Rifle Association in the past has been able to limit the use of federal data that trace the ownership of guns used in crimes. But this year, the NRA has run into a small problem: Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski is using her power and influence to block reauthorization of the gun-trace restrictions - and it's worth the fight.

Gun violence is ravaging cities like Baltimore, where nearly all murder victims are killed by guns, and shootings have steadily increased. It's a problem in Detroit, Jersey City, N.J., Washington and New York, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg has led the charge to repeal the gun-trace provision, named for Kansas Rep. Todd Tiahrt, a Republican.

Under the NRA-backed amendment to a spending bill, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives can only release the origin of a gun sale to police in cases of individual crimes as part of an ongoing investigation. That's a needless restriction that makes it difficult for law enforcement - and policymakers - to review gun trace data across jurisdictions, a procedure that could help identify trends in illegal gun sales and pinpoint dealers who are breaking the law.

What's more, Johns Hopkins University researchers have found that proper regulation and oversight, coupled with undercover sting operations, can influence - and, ideally, help stem - the flow of illegal guns.

As the new chairwoman of the Senate Appropriation Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies, Ms. Mikulski stripped the gun-trace restrictions from the U.S. Department of Justice spending bill this week. But gun-rights supporters are girding for a fight when the full committee meets today: An even tougher measure that would penalize police who use gun-trace information to identify suspect gun sales beyond one case may be in the works.

That's an affront to good policing; it should be defeated.

And if gun-rights supporters overtake Ms. Mikulski's good efforts, the senator's Maryland colleagues in the House have to carry on the fight. Eliminating the Tiahrt amendment would strengthen initiatives in Baltimore - and soon, suburban Washington - to crack down on illegal gun trafficking.

With the level of gun violence so prevalent here and across the country, local law enforcement needs all the tools it can get to track guns that end up in the hands of criminals. Gun dealers who obey the law aren't at risk. It's that small percentage of dealers who break the law that must be found and put out of business.

That is a good step!

Gina

Proposed change in gun bill triggers relief from Healy

Saturday, June 09, 2007

A controversial provision of a federal law that restricts the government from sharing gun trace data with local police has been stripped from the Senate appropriations bill now under consideration, a move that was applauded yesterday by Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy.

The language in the spending bill, known as the Tiahrt Amendment, was removed Thursday by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., chairwoman of the Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Subcommittee.

It will now go to a vote by the committee and the full Senate.

The amendment, named for its sponsor, Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., became the target of a campaign by the nationwide Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which includes Healy and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

"This has to be viewed as a major breakthrough for big cities and the Mayors coalition efforts to track and identify the sources of this scourge of illegal weapons that are destroying communities across the country," Healy said yesterday in a written statement. "We've done so much on a local level to combat these guns, but the origin of the problem is at the federal level."

The language of the amendment was inserted into the annual spending bill in 2003 and had been renewed each year since. It restricts the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from sharing data about the origins of guns seized by police.

Local governments must show that information they seek about guns is to be used only for a specific law enforcement investigation rather than to establish a broader pattern of where guns are coming from.

JASON FINK

Prosecutors cheer mayors pushing for info on guns Rapid-fire backup

Friday, April 20, 2007
By MICHAELANGELO CONTE
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

The County Prosecutors Association of New Jersey is backing Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy and a coalition of 214 mayors in their call for repeal of a law that restricts law enforcement access to federal gun trace data.

"This amendment makes absolutely no sense other than to pander to the gun lobby," Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said of the Tiahrt Amendment, which is currently being considered for renewal in Congress.

"This is all an attempt to allow these rogue gun dealers to continue selling guns with impunity."

DeFazio is the highest ranking law enforcement official in the county and the CPANJ delegate to the National District Attorneys Association.

This week, the CPANJ sent a letter to Rep. Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., chairman of the subcommittee on Science, Justice, Commerce and Related Agencies, advocating elimination of the amendment, which was passed as part of an appropriations bill and has been reauthorized ever since.

"The Tiahrt language imposes unnecessarily broad restrictions on access to and use of gun trace data and prevents law enforcement agencies from fully investigating and attacking the trafficking operations that supply illegal guns to criminals," the letter says.

The Tiahrt Amendment restricts the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from sharing data about the origin of illegal guns. Information can be shared if local officials show it is relevant to a specific criminal investigation or prosecution, but Jersey City's broader requests for data on guns it has taken off the street have been denied.

During an interview with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Healy and others on Wednesday, Jersey City Police Chief Tom Comey said the law also prohibits local police departments from sharing the data with one another.

In fact, according to the ATF, the amendment blocks the agency from providing one jurisdiction with information from another jurisdiction but those local law enforcement agencies can share the information with each other.

Comey said yesterday that ATF officials told him there had been a misunderstanding and that police could in fact share the information with other departments or with elected officials.

Quote:

Key confusing pieces are "Jersey City requested from the ATF trace information on guns used in crimes" AND ...
"the agency responded that it could not provide information ...except ... when such disclosure relates to a bona fide criminal investigation".

Were the "JC guns used in crimes" not a "bona fide criminal investigation". Why didn't the ATF consider the JC request "bona fide"?

Emphasis supplied.

Quote:

And Healy / Bloomy / Booker's problem with this is... ?

Guess local floods n stuff in JC don't measure up to photo-ops with Bloomberg and bagpipes.

FIGHTING THE LAW
Mayors: Feds handicapping us by not sharing gun info

Thursday, April 19, 2007
By MICHAELANGELO CONTE
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

The Coalition of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, led by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, came to Jersey City yesterday to call for the repeal of a law that restricts federal agencies from sharing data with local officials on the sources of illegal guns.

The event - which was held at City Hall and also featured the coalition's co-founder Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Newark Mayor Cory Booker - began with a moment of silence for the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings.

"It's a terrible tragedy that happened two days ago in Blacksburg, Va., but every day 30 Americans are murdered," said Bloomberg. "If one day is cause for you to think, what about 365 days?"

The majority of murders in America are committed with guns and the majority of those guns are purchased or possessed illegally, he added.

The coalition seeks repeal of the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from sharing with local governments data about the origin of guns that were used in crimes. It also bars local police departments from sharing such information - if they are able to obtain it - with one another, said Jersey City Police Chief Tom Comey.

Bloomberg said 1 percent of gun dealers are responsible for the guns that wind up in the hands of criminals. Opponents of the Tiahrt Amendment argue that this handful of dealers are selling to "straw purchasers" - people without criminal records who buy guns for those who do - and may be violating other federal gun laws.

Earlier this year, Jersey City requested from the ATF trace information on guns used in crimes from 2001 to 2006; the agency responded that it could not provide information "except to a federal, state or local law enforcement agency or prosecutor, and then only when such disclosure relates to a bona fide criminal investigation or prosecution."

Jersey City Corporation Counsel William Matsikoudis said the city had received information on only 30 of the 429 guns it had taken off the street.

Healy said 85 percent of guns used in crimes in Jersey City come from out of state.

The amendment, first passed in 2002 as part of an appropriations bill, has come up for renewal - and been passed - each year since then.

"This is a federal plague and it needs a federal cure," said Healy.

A spokesman for the amendment's sponsor, Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., said yesterday that the ATF requested the language in the amendment and it is aimed at protecting law enforcement officers by not releasing gun trace information. The spokesman, Chuck Knapp, said it is supported by the Fraternal Order of Police, the largest law enforcement association in America.

Knapp said Bloomberg met with Tiahrt in Washington a few months ago and came to some agreements about changes in the amendment.

"We were pretty surprised when Bloomberg started this tour, when the congressman was working in good faith to alleviate some of the concerns of law enforcement," Knapp said.

The bipartisan coalition is made up of 214 mayors, 27 from New Jersey.

During yesterday's event, Bloomberg noted that his mother grew up in Jersey City and went to Dickinson High School.

I guess BMWs and Benz are out for Greg Palast; they kill Americans on our roads and are made in Germany home of the Nazis

PS-

Walter- Germany
Glock- Austria

[quote]
Pipeline......



The Walther .22 comes from Austria. Hitler came from Austria, too. The Glock 7mm student-slayer comes from Germany. With the legal protection handed them by Bush
and Reid, the two Teutonic weapons profiteers can skip free of legal judgment with that line well-practiced by their countrymen: "We were only taking orders
-- for our product."

**********

Soshin,

That is one of the most unintelligible and moronic arguments I have ever read (I'm referring to the op-ed you posted). The author confuses arguments, metaphors and data throughout the piece. I dare say it does more harm to the cause of gun control than to the politicians who front for the NRA.

On another note, the below piece was in the WSJ, and I think comes off well reasoned, even if I don't agree with all of the conclusions.

Cho's Madness
April 18, 2007; Page A16
The mass murder at Virginia Tech is the kind of traumatic event that unleashes a torrent of pop sociology and national psychoanalysis, so allow us to weigh in with a more fundamental explanation: There are evil and psychotic people in this world willing to do great harm to others if they aren't stopped. The dilemma in a free society is how to stop them.

Cho Seung-Hui seems to fit the profile of a social misfit who snapped. Like many other mass killers, the 23-year-old is being described by acquaintances as a "loner," given to bursts of hostility and other antisocial behavior. We will learn more in the coming days, but our guess is that those who knew him will conclude that they saw the warning signs.

The calculation of his murder spree also suggests some deeper evil at work -- if we can use that word in liberal company. Cho used chain locks to bar students from escaping, lined some up against a wall, and emptied his clips with brutal resolve. "There wasn't a shooting victim that didn't have less than three bullet wounds in them," one of the doctors on the scene told CNN. This was a malevolent soul.

How can a society that wants to maintain its own individual freedoms stop such a man? The reflexive answer in some quarters, especially overseas, is to blame any killing on America's "lax" guns laws. Reading a summary of European editorials yesterday, we couldn't help but wonder if they all got the same New York Times memo, so uniform was their cultural disdain and their demand for new gun restrictions.

Yet Virginia Tech had banned guns on campus, using a provision in Virginia law allowing universities to become exceptions to the state's concealed carry pistol permits. Virginia is also known for its strict enforcement of gun violations, having implemented a program known as Project Exile that has imposed stiffer penalties and expedited gun cases.

In any case, there is no connection between recent mass murder events and gun restrictions. As Quebec economist Pierre Lemieux noted yesterday, "Mass killings were rare when guns were easily available, while they have been increasing as guns have become more controlled." The 1996 murders in the Scottish town of Dunblane -- 17 killed -- occurred despite far more restrictive gun laws than America's.

You could more persuasively argue, as David Kopel does nearby, that the presence of more guns on campus might have stopped Cho sooner. But as a general rule we are not among those who think college students, of all people, should be advised to add guns to the books in their backpacks.

Any gun control crusade is doomed to fail anyway in a country like the U.S. with some 200 million weapons already in private hands. While New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg seems ready to stump for gun restrictions, we doubt many Democrats will join him. They did so after Columbine in 1999, only to lose the 2000 election in part because of the cultural backlash in America's rural and hunting counties. We'll concede that this political reality has changed only when New York Senators Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton decide once again to pick up the gun control cause.

A better response than gun control would be to restore some of the cultural taboos that once served as restraints on antisocial behavior. These columns long ago noted the collapse of such social and moral restraints in a widely debated editorial called "No Guardrails." Instead, after Columbine, there was a rush to blame violent videogames. But videogames or other larger media influences don't inspire mass murder when there are countervailing restraints and values instilled by families, teachers, coaches and pastors. Two generations ago, colleges felt an obligation to act in loco parentis. Today, the concept is considered as archaic as the Latin -- and would probably inspire a lawsuit.

However, even those benevolent influences -- were it possible to restore them -- might not have made a difference in the case of Cho Seung-Hui, whose madness can't be explained by reason.

I'd imagine that Bloomberg would argue that the gun shops are turning a blind eye to state borders anyway so why shouldn't he. Here is an interesting article on the Iron Pipeline......

---------------------------------


The Accomplices: Sundance George and Butch Reid and the Virginia Tech Massacre

by Greg Palast
Tuesday, April 17, 2007

He had accomplices. Don't kid yourself: 23-year-old Cho Seung-hui didn't forge his two little pistols in his smithy shop.

He had a dealer, a guns-and-bullets pusher-man who put the heat in his hand, took the kid's money and pocketed it with a grin.

"Whether you are looking for a pistol for affordable training or simply the excitement of shooting, the P22 is the pistolfor you!"

That's the ad on the Walther website for the student-reaper, a Walther .22.

Not that Walther, or its fellow murder-maker, Glock, which crafted the other Weapon of Student Mass Destruction, the Glock 7mm, kept all of the killer kid's money. The gun makers religiously tithe a portion of their grim reapings to
their friends in Washington.

This report isn't about gun control legislation or the right to bear arms or any of that sideways crap. This is about a group of co-conspirators who dropped two killing devices into the hands of someone who shouldn't have had access to a plastic spoon.

But before we bring in the suspects for questioning, let's pull back the camera ens for the bigger picture. Because what we saw at Virginia Tech was just a concentrated node of a larger, nationwide killing spree that goes on day after
day in the USA. Eighty-thousand Americans take a bullet from a hand gun in any year. Thirty-thousand die. That's one thousand shooting deaths off-camera for each victim at Virginia Tech.

Sundance Bush is right now at the school for his photo op. The President is, "saddened and angered by these senseless acts of violence." But will our senseless and violent President do anything about it? He already has: On July 29, 2005, the US Senate passed, then Bush signed, a grant of immunity from lawsuits for Walther, Glock and other gun manufacturers.

Now, corporations that make hand-guns can't be sued for knowingly selling firearms to killers. Like that? No other industry has such wide lawsuit immunity -- not teachers, not doctors, not cops -- only gun makers.

Here's how Cho got his guns. It's a story you won't hear on CNN. It begins with something known as, The Iron Pipeline. At one end of the Pipeline are states like Alabama where gun laws are loosey-goosey. Gun makers including Glock stuff the 'Bama end of the pipe with far more guns than can ever be bought legally in that state, knowing full well that the guns will be illegally shipped up the pipeline into states where gun laws are tougher. Virginia law prevents
"gun-trafficking"; in Alabama, they could care less.

In every state in America, a bar owner is liable to lawsuit if a bartender serves too many drinks and a customer dies in an auto accident. Hand a chainsaw to a child, you're in legal trouble. Until Bush signed the 2005 protect-the-gun-makers law, the same common law against negligent distribution
applied to firearms.

Bush was aiming at Stephen Fox. Steven can describe feeling pieces of his brain fly from his skull after a mugger shot him. He's permanently paralyzed. A jury charged the makers of .25-caliber hand guns with negligent distribution -- and Bush went wild.

He was especially worked up because the City of New Orleans sued the gun makers for the cost of hospitalizing cops shot by armaments pooping out the end of the
Iron Pipeline. The NAACP joined in the suit with the effrontery to demand the gun-pushers alter their marketing programs to keep their products out of the hands of maniacs and murderers.

Do the gun manufacturers know their .22's are being used for something other than hunting long-horned elk? Every year, the federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agency sends 800,000 requests to the gun companies to trace weapons found at crime scenes. As Fox's attorney told me, criminals are a much-valued, if unpublicized, market segment sought out and provisioned by these
manufacturers.

But they're safe, the gun-makers, even if we aren't, because of Bush's immunitylaw. But Sundance Bush didn't act alone. There was Harry 'Butch' Reid, leader of
the Senate Democrats, riding shotgun on the immunity bandwagon.

The Walther .22 comes from Austria. Hitler came from Austria, too. The Glock 7mm student-slayer comes from Germany. With the legal protection handed them by Bush
and Reid, the two Teutonic weapons profiteers can skip free of legal judgment with that line well-practiced by their countrymen: "We were only taking orders
-- for our product."

**********

This report is adapted from, "Just Put Down that Lawsuit, Pardner, and No One
Gets Hurt" in the Class War section of the new edition of Greg Palast's
bestseller, "ARMED MADHOUSE: Sordid Secrets and Strange Tales of A White House
Gone Wild."

Say what you will, but Bloomberg SERIOUSLY overstepped his bounds by trying to run a law enforcement operation in another state.

And don't forget to sign up for the great Bloomberg gun gave-away!!!!!

Gun Give-Away

Healy hosting mayors to call for info on guns
Wednesday, April 18, 2007

The big guns are coming to Jersey City.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino will join Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy and others today at City Hall to speak against a law that limits what information cities can get about guns seized by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Scheduled for 12:30 p.m., the event will focus on the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts cities and police from accessing and using ATF data from guns recovered in crimes.

This information, the mayors argue, could help cities clamp down on gun dealers making illegal sales and understand regional gun trafficking patterns.

Named for its original sponsor, Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., the amendment is up for an extension as part of the federal budget.

Healy is one of 15 original mayors to participate in "Mayors Against Illegal Guns," the group chaired by Bloomberg and Menino.

Mayors from across New Jersey are expected to attend.

KEN THORBOURNE