State draws praise and fire for release of gun data

TRENTON, N.J. — Gun control advocates are hailing New Jersey’s release of nearreal-time firearms trafficking data as a trailblazing use of federal information, but Second Amendment advocates and skeptical Republicans question whether the report amounts to a way around a federal limitation on the release of some data.

Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy unveiled the data last week as part of a campaign promise to strengthen New Jersey’s already-tight gun laws. The report uses what gun control supporters say is a novelty: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives guntrace data for the first quarter of 2018 to show that 77 percent of guns used in crimes in New Jersey come from out of state.

The publication appears to be the first time a state has taken advantage of the ATF data with such speed, according to experts at the gun safety Giffords organization and the Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Cities, most notably Chicago, have used the ATF data in reports, but those came out annually. New Jersey has pledged to post monthly data and quarterly data based on ATF reports.

“New Jersey stepped up, said we have this data, we get it from ATF and we’re going to do the work to gather, visualize and then publicize this,” David Chipman, a former ATF agent and the senior policy adviser at Giffords, the organization named for gun-attack victim and former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

The data release comes amid a national conversation surrounding gun control in the aftermath of fatal shootings at a high school in Parkland, Fla., and as Democrats push for tighter gun laws while the Republican-led Congress has not passed any such measures.

Speedy data reporting by ATF is a political lightning rod because the agency’s release of data is governed by an appropriations provision that prohibits it from releasing information from its firearms trace database to anyone other than a law enforcement agency or prosecutor in connection with a criminal investigation.

That has led Second Amendment advocates to raise concerns over the publicizing of such information.

The Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, an affiliate of the National Rifle Association, said Murphy could be skirting the federal provision on gun data.