The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
AG vows crackdown on gun trafficking
WASHINGTON >> Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed Thursday that the Justice Department would crack down on gun trafficking corridors as part of a comprehensive approach to combat surging gun violence that also includes funding community intervention programs and other neighborhood groups.
Garland returned to his hometown of Chicago, where shootings have soared this year, as the Justice Department launched strike forces to confront the rise in gun violence in five U.S. cities — Chicago, New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Before he left Washington, Garland met with agents at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and said he hoped the Senate would confirm President Joe Biden’s nominee to run the agency to help front the federal effort against gun violence. The nomination of David Chipman has been stalled. Chipman is a two-decade veteran of the ATF who served as an adviser to a major gun control group and would be the first formal leader since 2015.
In Chicago, Garland toured a local police precinct, looking on as police officials showed him real-time surveillance video capabilities and how they use ShotSpotter, gunshot detection software, to respond to shootings. He also met with Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Police Superintendent David Brown and later visited a nearby church to meet with a group that is committed to violence prevention and intervention.
Garland said federal prosecutors in Chicago and the other cities were “linked up” with federal prosecutors across jurisdictions, particularly in places where guns are bought legally and later trafficked into major cities with more restrictive gun laws.
Garland said law enforcement also needs to work with community organizations to make the Justice Department’s initiative successful, and those organizations need to trust law enforcement.
Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco met with ATF agents in Washington before traveling to Chicago.
“Our job is also of course to go after the sources of those guns, the corridors that they travel in and the networks that feed those guns to the places where they are doing the most violent crime...” Monaco said.
Besides prioritizing gun crimes, the strike forces will embrace intelligence sharing and prosecutions across jurisdictions, Justice Department officials said. Authorities have also embedded federal agents in homicide units of police departments across the U.S., have been deploying additional crime analysts and are conducting fugitive sweeps to arrest people who have outstanding state and federal warrants for violent crimes.
Violent crimes, particularly homicides and shootings, are up in many cities around the country, and the Biden administration has sought to aid communities hamstrung by violence. But the initiative begun this week differs from other recent federal efforts to address violence, because it is not sending agents or prosecutors into cities with crime spikes.
There is no federal gun trafficking law, so federal agents often must rely on other statutes — like a law against lying on a firearms purchase form — to prosecute gun trafficking cases or stop straw purchasers, people who buy weapons legally to then provide them to others who can’t legally have them.
Officials hope the new plan will mean federal prosecutors in some of the supply cities will be more likely to bring charges in those cases.