Georgia No. 1 For Guns Used In Out-Of-State Crimes

“I hate stating negatives, but I think if you take Georgia as a norm, what you’re going to find is you don’t have restrictions on types of weapons, you don’t have long waiting periods, you don’t have additional carry permits requires,” said Special Agent Kevin O’Keefe, the chief of the ATF’s Violent Crime Intelligence Division.

Combine those qualities with Georgia’s access to interstates, and he says you have an idea of why it’s a popular state for gun traffickers.

“Why drive an extra six hours to Miami, when you could stop in Georgia if you found someone with ID to buy for you,” O’Keefe said.

The ATF’s trace data doesn’t say how many times the firearms change hands. It just shows where they were first bought legally and where officers found them on the wrong side of the law.

There are three main paths those firearms will take.

“The most obvious that everybody knows about is theft,” O’Keefe said.

Then there are secondary markets.

“Guns are bought and sold through private sales, gun shows, flea markets and things of that nature. And you lose track of that because it’s not in regulated commerce,” he said.

Those guns are then driven out of the state for any number of reasons.

The last way is straw purchases, which means firearms bought by someone who can pass a background check and then sold for a profit.

There are sometimes hints in the trace data about what journey a gun may have taken such as time between the original purchase and when they’re recovered by police. But hard and fast breakdowns are not currently possible.

The handgun that alleged shooter Demetrius Blackwell used to shoot NYPD Officer Moore was stolen from a Perry, Georgia, pawn shop in 2011. That year, police in other states confiscated more than 2,700 Georgia firearms used in crimes. That number has since jumped by 12 percent.

When the Perry pawn shop was first broken into, the owner had an old security camera and an iron gate outside the door.

“It’s got a lock on it. They cut the lock open, and they just busted down the door,” Perry police detective Heath Dykes said.

He says heists like these are over in seconds and often leave little evidence behind. So simple things to deter or slow down would-be thieves would help matters a lot.

“While the alarm company’s calling 911 and they’re wrestling with that door, we ride up on them and catch them,” Dykes said. 

Both the Perry Police Department and the ATF actively try to educate dealers and citizens about security and safe storage, but there are no regulations on how firearms dealers secure their wares. There are nearly 4,000 licensed firearms dealers in Georgia.

“I’m not for the government mandating anything,” Jerry Henry, the executive director of Georgia Carry, said.

Gun dealers already have an incentive for protecting their merchandise, he said.

“Now if the guy wants to lose $20,000 worth of guns, that’s bad. But he’s also going to go out of business very much,” Henry said.

He said the problem isn’t about the availability of guns in Georgia. From his perspective, the problem is judges aren’t giving harsh enough sentences.

“I’m for, if you find the guy that stole somebody’s guns, put ‘em in jail for the next 25 years,” he said. 

Following NYPD Officer Moore’s death, U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer has called for strengthening the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and allowing it to expand the trace program. The tracing data is compiled from all guns police find at the scene of a crime, on suspects or on people prohibited from owning firearms. The ATF loosely calls these “crime guns.”