A Proposal To Do Something About Mass Shootings

What if we had a whole federal agency committed to firearms? Oh wait, we do!

No solution to the problem of mass shootings looks viable right now.

Some folks think that we need more funding to treat mental illness and that will solve the problem. Others say tighter gun control laws are the only solution. Andy Borowitz offered this on Facebook:

OK: so some people say we have a gun problem and others say we have a mental health problem. How about us working on both problems rather than what we’re presently working on — neither?

Realistically, getting anything meaningful through Congress isn’t going to happen any time soon. They aren’t going to dramatically increase funding for mental health services and they aren’t going to create tighter control laws as we head into a Presidential election year. We’ll have more mass shootings and President Obama will show more resigned anger.

After the last mass shooting, like every parent or person who doesn’t want to be shot randomly, I wondered if there isn’t something that could be done.

And I think that maybe there is.

Mass shootings wouldn’t happen if people didn’t have access to guns. They, of course, also wouldn’t happen if people didn’t have an interest in doing a mass shooting (hence the mental health angle), but let’s stick with the guns for a second.

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There’s a whole federal agency that is responsible for gun control — ATF.

When I was a federal public defender, I saw ATF agents often. Virtually every time the agent was working a case that involved garden-variety drug or violent crime. Someone would be suspected of being involved in a murder or in drug dealing. That person would wind up with a gun, and wouldn’t be allowed to have one. The ATF would find a straw purchaser — another person with a clean criminal record — who had bought that gun. The feds, including the ATF, would squeeze that person to cooperate against the suspected drug dealer.

As I’ve known the ATF, pretty much the only thing it does is supplement the DEA or local cops in connection with gun and drug crimes. Sure, guns are the tools of drug dealers. But the ATF I’ve seen does little beyond be another platoon fighting in the drug war.

Times change. The drug war is generally recognized as a failure. Mass shootings are a chronic and huge problem that screams for attention.

Has the ATF changed its priorities to deal with this threat? Do they think that mass shootings are their problem?

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If you look at their latest budget submission to Congress, the answer is a very sad “No.”

Sure, the ATF invokes mass shootings — if you’re asking for money from Congress it would be foolish not to. They say, for example:

Productivity Challenges: Tragic mass shootings in public spaces such as movie theaters, shopping malls, government facilities, schools and universities, as well as explosives and bombing incidents at significant public events such as the Boston Marathon have become a preeminent public safety concern, resulting in an increased need for ATF’s core law enforcement competencies.

Good. Switch it up to focus on the mass shootings. That’s promising. But how does that square with what ATF says they’ll be doing?

Pretty poorly.

ATF’s priorities include combating violent crime (see pages 17-23 of their request to Congress). Mass shootings are, undoubtedly, violent crimes. But check out what the ATF means by the kind of “violent crime” they want to stop:

ATF establishes and reinforces accountability at all levels by giving a [Special Agent in Charge of an office] the necessary tools to prioritize and address the specific violent crime threats in their areas, whether they are violent repeat offenders, gangs or criminal organizations.

The mass shootings we’ve seen aren’t caused by violent repeat offenders or gangs. Cracking down on more gangs or felons in possession of firearms does just about nothing to prevent the next mass shooting.

What about stemming the flow of illegal weapons? The ATF does go after illegal firearms trafficking. Here’s how they describe it:

Illegally trafficked firearms are harmful to communities and have a negative impact on interstate and international commerce. Illegal firearms are the “tools of the trade” that drug traffickers, gang members, and other violent criminals use to commit violent crimes against each other as well as against law enforcement officials and innocent civilians.

The goal of ATF’s illegal firearms trafficking enforcement efforts is to reduce violent crime by stemming the flow of firearms to violent criminals.

Again, this isn’t really mass shooter focused.

What the ATF is doing is going after street crime. In its funding request to Congress, the mentions of “mass shooting” come up in the least meaningful of ways. ATF isn’t proposing a solution, because working on a solution to mass shootings just isn’t its priority.

If you want to know what problems an agency is going to solve, check out what it’s goals are. ATF’s just don’t involve preventing weapons from landing in the hands of people who want to shoot up a public space. Check out the agency’s performance plan — the things it has as performance goals on page 36 of its submission. None of its goals relate to mass shootings.

The rifles used in the San Bernardino shooting were changed to make them assault weapons. I’ve done lots of gun cases involving the ATF — I can’t remember one that didn’t involve a black guy suspected of drug dealing with a weapons charge as a proxy for a drug charge.

Frankly, I don’t know exactly what the ATF can do. If you want to reduce the numbers of assault weapons on the street, you should first try to come up with a plan to reduce those numbers. Maybe that will fail, but right now almost any plan is better than no plan. The ATF sees the guns that cause mass shootings as not it’s problem. That ought to change.

We have a serious problem with firearms in this country. Maybe the agency in charge of regulating firearms ought to think it’s their problem.