FIREARMS LEGISLATION THURSDAY, JULY 17, 1975 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m., 219, Cannon House Office Building, Hon. John Conyers, Jr. [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding. Present: Representatives Conyers, Hughes, McClory, and Ashbrook. Also present: Maurice A. Barboza, counsel. Mr. CONYERS. The subcommittee will come to order. This afternoon the Subcommittee on Crime of the House Committee on the Judiciary continues hearings on firearms legislation. We are happy to again hear testimony from the Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms of the Department of the Treasury, Mr. Rex D. Davis. The Director has with him a number of familiar associates. We welcome you to come forward with whomever you choose, introduce them, and continue your testimony. TESTIMONY OF REX D. DAVIS, DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF ALCOHOL, TOBACCO, AND FIREARMS, DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, it is a pleasure to appear before the Subcommittee on Crime. Today, I have Mr. Marvin Dessler, who has appeared before the committee before, who is the Chief Counsel for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. On my left, Mr. Miles Keathley, Deputy Assistant Director, Criminal Enforcement of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and we have in the audience, Mr. Ed Owens, who is a firearms technical expert of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Mr. Chairman, if it pleases the committee, I will continue with the presentation that we have conducted during the other appearances before the committee. It should not take long; however, I feel there is information involved of interest to the committee. Mr. CONYERS. If I might say, your testimony has been one of the benchmarks by which these hearings have been conducted, and we are grateful for the rather large amount of time that you and your staff have put in before us. If you could, is there some way you might briefly outline the materials that you have covered, in order to bring us up to date? We have not had you before us for several weeks now. Please give us a bird's-eye view of the matters in which you intend to wind up your testimony. Mr. DAVIS. It would be my pleasure, Mr. Chairman. In the previous appearances before this subcommittee, we have discussed the handgun situation generally in the United States, in terms of the population of handguns in private ownership, which we estimate, I think fairly accurately at 40 million, and the fact that each year this population of privately owned handguns increases in the amount of 2,400,000. We have advised the committee of what the impact was of the 1968 Gun Control Act on the importation of inexpensive concealable handguns and the fact that the 1968 legislation has been circumvented through the importation of parts and the domestic manufacture of the kinds of handguns that were prohibited from being imported by the 1968 act. We brought the committee up to date concerning those kinds of weapons that are particularly useful to criminals, such as sawed-off shotguns, machineguns, and then the 1970 amendments which included destructive devices, such as mines, bombs, Molotov cocktails, et cetera. We advised the subcommittee as to the organization of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. We indicated the use to which our manpower is being put to the various responsibilities that we have. We indicated a number of arrests and seizures as they relate to firearms, the number of arrests that are made by the Bureau for firearms' violations, exceeding 3,000 per year and we also advised the committee as to judicial disposition of the cases that are made for violation of the Federal firearms laws. We pointed out to the committee that one of our responsibilities. is the licensing of manufacturers, importers, and dealers, and that we presently have a population of dealers in the United States that amounts to about 156,000 but, however, we feel that many of these people are only nominal dealers, not commercially engaged in this business of selling firearms and that we felt that this number could probably be reduced to somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 or 40,000 legitimately licensed dealers who are actively engaged in the promotion and business of selling firearms. We indicated to the committee the kinds of actions that we take on applications for licenses, those that we deny, those that we issue. We indicated to the committee that because of the large number of licensed dealers and the small amount of agent manpower with respect to manpower that we have, that we are not able to effectively conduct compliance checks on these dealers and we estimate at the present rate, it would take us something like 5 years between. every visit to a dealer, if we visited every one. Again, we indicated to the committee the manpower that we used in this particular area. We also told the committee of our efforts in tracing the ownership of weapons that are used in crime. We advised the subcommittee, for example, that last year we traced' 33,000 firearms that were used or suspected of being used in crime. We indicated that about 60 percent of these traces were made on behalf of State and local law enforcement organizations. We indicated to the committee a small sample to determine the effectiveness of gun tracing as it relates to crime in which it was indicated that in the case of sampling it is a very effective tool to be used. We discussed project identification, in which we have, working with the local police, traced weapons when we first appeared before the committee. I think we had the results of eight cities. Today, I am prepared to give the committee information on a total of 16 major metropolitan areas that we have conducted traces in. I think we did indicate to the committee and this has been borne out throughout the study, that there is a very discernible pattern that guns found to be used in street crime in those areas having strict controls, that sources for those guns come from outside of the State in which the metropolitan area is located; therefore, very obviously, the people are avoiding gun laws by acquiring firearms in areas where the laws are less strict. We indicated to the committee what we are doing in the area of assistance to State and local law enforcement officers, such things as laboratory assistance training and things of this kind. We also told the committee in previous appearances that we have instituted an interstate firearms theft program in an attempt to stop thefts of firearms from interstate shipments. We have indicated as a result of reports to us, it appears this program has been very effective, because the number of theft incidents reported to us has dropped from approximately 75 a month down to about 45 a month. So we feel the fact that we made special emphasis on these kinds of thefts and the fact that as a result of this many of the carriers introduced higher levels of security and has had a very salutary effect in preventing thefts from interstate commerce, from interstate shipments. We told the committee that the so-called pen guns-those guns that were designed to expel tear gas-things of that sort, but, unfortunately, as a result of seizures we had made and information we received from police departments throughout the country, the conversions and use of these kinds of weapons were increasing and represented a particular threat to the lives of law enforcement officers. So we did, as of July 1, issue a ruling that these guns, because of their ready convertibility to fire fixed ammunition would as of July 1, be considered as firearms under the act and, therefore, would have to be serialized and only dealt with by licensed dealers. Mr. ASHBROOK. Serialized by the manufacturers? Mr. DAVIS. Yes; of course, I might say my estimate is that about 50 percent of those that were introduced into commerce in the United States were imported, therefore, since they are firearms, they can no longer be imported into the United States. We also advised the committee that on the basis of our various projects and studies and other things, that there appeared to be a rather sizable traffic in handguns which was brought about by the fact that an individual could go to a dealer and buy any unlimited number of handguns and therefore, go out on the street and resell them unlawfully and also without complying with Federal laws, 58-929-76- 4 so, therefore, effective July 1, 1975, we have required that dealers report to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms any sale of more than one handgun at the same time to the same individual or more than one handgun to the same individual during 5 business days. We have some early results which I will be happy to pass on to the committee, with respect to the multiple sale of handguns. Mr. Chairman, I think that, then, is a quick summary of where we have been and at the committee's pleasure, I will proceed to bring the information up-to-date and complete the presentation. Mr. CONYERS. Thanks for that excellent review. You remind me of how much re-reading I will have to do. Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Chairman, when we were here before we advised you at that time that we had instituted our Greenville project. This came about because of our project identification efforts in the city of New York, which showed that a large number of handguns used in street crime in New York had their source in South Carolina and so, very frankly, what we wanted to do was find out how many other prohibited persons were purchasing handguns, felons. There is some sort of an updated chart of the Greenville project. What we did, I think this is interesting, because it shows a little bit about the dealer population. When we looked, we found out that in the city and county of Greenville area there were 203 licensed dealers. Again, we suspect many of these were really not engaged in commercial traffic but we did take the 17 largest dealers in the Greenville area, including 5 pawnbrokers and we surveyed their firearms records for a 6-month period. We found that these 17 dealers had sold 2,651 handguns during that 6 months and incidentally, it was the period from May 1, 1974 to October 31, 1974. As a result of that, we found, at a close glance, that there were 73 people that had felony arrest records, and about 200 or about 10 percent had arrest records. When we narrowed it down, as a result of FBI checks, we finally found there were 68 who had actual felony convictions, some of them, for example, had been pardoned. One man was not the proper man-he was not the same person as another person with the same name-but at any rate, as a result of that, about 3 percent roughly who purchased firearms in the Greenville area during the 6 months period turned out to be prohibited by reason of having felony convictions. Mr. CONYERS. What was that percentage? Mr. DAVIS. About 3 percent. Now, this of course, if you extend this nationally, it does not sound like much, but if you apply it against 2,400,000 handguns; it does mean a very lot of felons are buying handguns around the country. Eventually, going to the U.S. attorney's office in that area and reviewing the felony convictions, we determined some were not properly represented by counsel at the time of conviction, the time redemption or sale. I should say that 2 of the 5; I will back up, that we would institute Federal prosecution against 27 of those 68 people. Now, it would be interesting for the committee to know for example, while there were 5 pawnbrokers in the study, 17 of those persons eventually prosecuted acquired their guns through pawnshop redemption or sale. I should say that 2 of the 5, I will back up, that of those 5 pawnshops, 17 of them originated in 2 pawnshops-the felons who were prosecuted acquired their weapons in these 2 pawnshops. These 27 people purchased a total of 35 handguns. The value of statistics are such that 20 percent of these felons acquired guns that cost more than $85; 26 percent acquired handguns valued $50 to $85; and 54 percent acquired handguns valued at less than $50. Now, we are not sure exactly what that means. Certainly more than half of them bought handguns, cheap handguns, and 26 percent of them bought, I suspect you would call medium-priced handguns, 20 percent high-priced handguns. I might say, Mr. Chairman, in order to validate or determine if this is valid, we have instituted a similar project in the city of Des Moines, Iowa, and since we have reached that point where publicity as to the location makes no difference, we picked Des Moines because it is a city of about the same population as Greenville, S.C., and, of course, we think its location would give some added validity. We have in Des Moines, we were checking 15 dealers' records, we know that there were 2,300 forms, transaction forms in the 13-month period in this case so that we already know for example, in Des Moines they only sell about 50 percent of the number of guns they do in Greenville, S.C., and we will certainly advise the committee of the final results of the survey. Mr. CONYERS. When will it be concluded? Mr. KEATHLEY. We are preparing the FBI name check now. They are in process of moving their records and we will not be able to submit these before September, so it will be a little bit later in the year. Mr. CONYERS. That is a 6-month study, too? Mr. KEATHLEY. No, sir; it is a 13-month period. We attempted to get the same number of gun sales in Des Moines as we did in Greenville and it took 13 months to get the same number as would come up in 6 months in Greenville. Mr. DAVIS. I might point out, Mr. Chairman, in furthering our efforts to try to eliminate the source of guns from South Carolina to the Northeastern States, that we did conduct a very extensive undercover operation in South Carolina which resulted in the arrest of 8 firearms dealers and the arrests of 11 people, the other 3 being employees in the stores in question, so that we know, for example, that the South Carolina Legislature is actively considering additional gun control laws in that State and we are hoping to have some of our people appear before the South Carolina Legislature so we feel with these various activities that maybe we will have some preventive effect in that State as a source of handguns. I mentioned the multiple sales program previously and there has been some publicity concerning it but if the committee would care to, I have here some packets of the kind of information we send the firearms dealers. Included in that is a form we have prepared for them to be posted on the premises and they very clearly say the multiple sale of handguns must be reported to the Bureau. In there also are some forms to be used in reporting, et cetera. |