Bad Times Ahead for Gun Dealers?
Don Staples
from a Clintonite. I suppose there is a clandestine group of crooked
dealers out there figuring out ways to arm the criminals. What a joke.
"John A. Stovall" <johnas...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:s1jv3v88qioihkbet...@4ax.com...
> I got this in an email and am posting it without comment.
>
> Gun Industry Ex-Official Describes Bond of Silence
>
>
> February 4, 2003
> By FOX BUTTERFIELD
>
>
>
> A former senior firearms industry executive said in an
> affidavit filed in court in San Diego yesterday that gun
> manufacturers had long known that some of their dealers
> corruptly sold guns to criminals but pressured one another
> into remaining silent for fear of legal liability. It is
> the first time a senior official in the gun industry has
> broken ranks to challenge practices in the business.
>
>
> The affidavit, by Robert A. Ricker, a former chief lobbyist
> and executive director of the American Shooting Sports
> Council, then the main gun industry trade organization, was
> filed in California Superior Court in support of claims by
> 12 California cities and counties suing the gun makers and
> their wholesalers and retail dealers.
>
>
> The cities, led by Los Angeles and San Francisco, contend
> that the gun industry has maintained a distribution system
> that allows many guns to fall into the hands of criminals
> and juveniles, creating a public nuisance and violating a
> California law on unfair business practices.
>
>
> A copy of Mr. Ricker's declaration, filed under seal, was
> made available to The New York Times.
>
>
> Mr. Ricker, a moderate in an industry dominated by
> hard-liners, lost his post as executive director of the
> American Shooting Sports Council in 1999 after attending a
> White House meeting with President Bill Clinton to discuss
> preventing more school shootings like the one at Columbine
> High School in Colorado.
>
>
> The meeting was opposed by the National Rifle Association,
> and Mr. Ricker said in his affidavit that pressure from the
> rifle association led the gun industry to disband his
> organization in favor of the more conservative National
> Shooting Sports Foundation.
>
>
> Several lawyers for the gun companies, including Lawrence
> G. Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports
> Foundation, now the main gun industry trade group, said
> they had not yet seen Mr. Ricker's affidavit and therefore
> could not comment.
>
>
> In their defense, the gun makers have insisted they do not
> know what happens after the guns leave the factory, since
> they are sold to wholesalers and in turn to retail dealers.
>
>
>
> But Mr. Ricker, who has been working for more than two
> decades in the gun industry, including a stint as a lawyer
> for the N.R.A., said the gun makers had long known that
> "the diversion of firearms from legal channels of commerce
> to the black market" takes place "principally at the
> distributor/dealer level."
>
>
> "Corrupt dealers" make it easy for criminals and juveniles
> to buy guns, Mr. Ricker said, by allowing practices like
> "straw sales," in which an individual buys a gun on behalf
> of someone who is prohibited from purchasing a gun because
> of a criminal conviction or his age.
>
>
> "Leaders in the industry have long known that greater
> industry action to prevent illegal transactions is
> possible," Mr. Ricker said, particularly through a network
> of manufacturers' representatives who stay in close touch
> with dealers. But industry officials have "resisted taking
> constructive voluntary action," he said, and have "sought
> to silence others within the industry."
>
>
> This has resulted in a "see-no-evil, hear-no-evil
> approach," Mr. Ricker said, and encouraged "a culture of
> evasion of firearms laws and regulations."
>
>
> The gun makers became sufficiently concerned about their
> potential liability, Mr. Ricker said, that they convened
> annual meetings from 1992 through 1997, which he attended.
> A major subject was whether it would be good to take
> voluntary action to better control the distribution of
> guns.
>
>
> But, Mr. Ricker said, "the prevailing view was that if the
> industry took action voluntarily, it would be an admission
> of responsibility for the problem." Eventually, some of the
> lawyers decided that even holding the meetings was
> "dangerous" and they were stopped, Mr. Ricker said.
>
>
> Dennis A. Henigan, legal director for the Brady Center to
> Prevent Gun Violence, said of Mr. Ricker's affidavit, "The
> consummate insider has now exposed the dirty little secret
> of the gun industry - that is, the underground market is
> supplied by corrupt gun dealers, and the industry punishes
> anyone who tries to stop it."
>
>
> Mr. Henigan is a co-counsel in the lawsuit by the
> California cities, which also include Oakland, Sacramento
> and Los Angeles County.
>
>
> In a telephone interview from his home in suburban
> Washington, Mr. Ricker said he had recently served as an
> expert witness for the gun industry in a related lawsuit,
> brought by Cincinnati. He said he also still served as a
> consultant to some gun companies.
>
>
> But Mr. Ricker said someone in the gun industry needed to
> speak up about bad dealers because "we've got a bunch of
> right-wing wackos at the N.R.A. controlling everything."
>
>
> Left to their own, Mr. Ricker said, many industry
> executives "would be more than willing to sit down and
> negotiate a settlement" with the cities about weeding out
> unscrupulous dealers.
>
>
> In his affidavit, Mr. Ricker also appeared to undercut
> another of the gun makers' most common defenses: that
> because they only sell to federally licensed dealers, they
> are fully obeying the law and the rest of the job of
> enforcing the law can be handled by the federal Bureau of
> Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
>
>
> Mr. Ricker said in the affidavit that the idea that all
> dealers operate legally because they have a license is a
> "fiction." He added that "the firearms industry has long
> known that A.T.F. is hampered" by its shortage of personnel
> and loopholes in the gun laws. For example, he said, the
> bureau can inspect a dealer only once a year as a result of
> a law supported by the rifle association.
>
>
>
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/04/national/04GUNS.html?ex=1045362162&ei=1&en
> =33e6957d720a7635
>
>
>
> ***************************************************************
>
> "In this world, things are complicated and are decided
> by many factors. We should look at problems from different
> aspects, not from just one."
>
> "On the Chungking Negotiations"
> (October 17, 1945),
> Selected Works, Vol. IV, p. 54.
>
> Chairman Mao Tse-tung
Johnny Johnson
> I got this in an email and am posting it without comment.
>
> Gun Industry Ex-Official Describes Bond of Silence
>
> February 4, 2003
> By FOX BUTTERFIELD
>
> A former senior firearms industry executive said in an
> affidavit filed in court in San Diego yesterday that gun
> manufacturers had long known that some of their dealers
> corruptly sold guns to criminals but pressured one another
> into remaining silent for fear of legal liability. It is
> the first time a senior official in the gun industry has
> broken ranks to challenge practices in the business.
>
> The affidavit, by Robert A. Ricker, a former chief lobbyist
> and executive director of the American Shooting Sports
> Council, then the main gun industry trade organization, was
> filed in California Superior Court in support of claims by
> 12 California cities and counties suing the gun makers and
> their wholesalers and retail dealers.
>
> The cities, led by Los Angeles and San Francisco, contend
> that the gun industry has maintained a distribution system
> that allows many guns to fall into the hands of criminals
> and juveniles, creating a public nuisance and violating a
> California law on unfair business practices.
Using this same logic the automobile manufacturers should be held liable
for misuse of their products as well.
After all, they are well aware their "four-wheeled killing machines" are
the "criminals' choice" for drive-by shootings, escapes from their
heinous crimes, etc.
Why, Clyde Barrow even sent a letter to Henry Ford praising Ford's "V8":
"Tulsa Okla
10th April (1934)
Mr. Henry Ford
Detroit Mich.
Dear Sir -
While I still have got
breath in my lungs I
will tell you what a dandy
car you make. I have driven
Fords exclusively when I could
get away with one. For sustained
speed and freedom from
trouble the Ford has got ever
other car skinned and even if
my business hasn't been
strictly legal it don't hurt any
thing to tell you what a fine
car you got in the V8.
Yours truly
Clyde Champion Barrow"
Jim Alder
> Mr. Ricker, a moderate in an industry dominated by
> hard-liners, lost his post as executive director of the
> American Shooting Sports Council in 1999 after attending a
> White House meeting with President Bill Clinton to discuss
> preventing more school shootings like the one at Columbine
> High School in Colorado.
Could this be a man with a grudge? Ulterior motives don't
really matter to the media, who will listen attentively to every
word he has to say, without wondering for a second how
manufacturers would know who a dealer is selling to.
--
Congress is so strange. A man gets up to speak and says nothing.
Nobody listens - and then everybody disagrees. ~Boris Marshalov