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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - "Don't Lie for the Other Guy" straw purchase article

Posted: 11/3/2009 3:50:30 AM EDT

My favorite part is when the Brady Bunch douchebag compares gun dealers to drug kingpins.

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/20091102_Dont_lie_for_the_other_guy.html

“Don’t lie for the other guy”

By DANA DiFILIPPO

Philadelphia Daily News

[email protected] 215-854-5934

ON
THE GLASS cases featuring guns for sale at the Delaware Valley Sports
Center, the stickers warn: "Don't Lie for the Other Guy."

Behind
the cases, center manager Dwayne O'Brien stands ready to rat out
scofflaws, with dozens of cops' numbers programmed on his cell phone,
some on speed dial.

You'd never suspect that this shop was once
among the city's top crime-gun dealers, according to the Washington,
D.C.-based Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The center,
using data supplied by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms
and Explosives, ranked gun shops in 2000 by how many crime guns were
traced back to them. In Philly, the shop where O'Brien now works was in
the top five.

Gun dealers, the thinking goes, should be held
accountable for their role in the gun violence that bloodies city
streets. Careless or crooked gun dealers are just as guilty as the
criminals who illegally use guns, firearm foes say.

"You can't
stop gun crime without targeting the source, which is corrupt gun
dealers," said Daniel Vice, senior attorney at the Brady Center. "It's
the same reason we target drug kingpins ."

That view vexes O'Brien.

His
shop changed hands in 2006, and the new management has worked hard to
overcome its thug-friendly reputation. While O'Brien loathes corrupt
dealers as much as Vice, he says that conscientious merchants like
himself get unfairly smeared by scapegoating zealots.

"That's
like holding a car dealership responsible when someone kills someone
with a car - you cannot control what the consumer does with the
product," O'Brien said. "The only thing you can do is make sure that
gun gets in hands that are safe and legal."

Start at the source

Daniel Vice has a simple strategy for slowing the flow of guns into goons' hands.

Make 'em pay, starting at the source.

While
cops and courts punish the person caught with an illegal firearm, Vice
goes after the gun shops, suing them for liability on behalf of
gun-violence victims and snagging some staggering sums.

When
10-year-old Faheem Thomas-Childs got caught in a 2004 gang shootout
outside his North Philadelphia elementary school and died days later,
Brady Center attorneys joined Philadelphia lawyers to sue the American
Gun and Lock Club, in Fishtown.

The attorneys argued that the
club negligently sold gang members, through a straw sale, the gun that
was used to kill the third-grader. The case settled for an undisclosed
amount in 2007.

Brady Center lawyers also won a $1 million
settlement in 2004 for two Orange, N.J., officers shot and injured on
duty, after suing the West Virginia shop that sold, in a straw sale,
the gun that the cops' attacker used. The same year, the center snagged
a $2.4 million settlement from a gun dealer and manufacturer on behalf
of the D.C. sniper victims.

Such victories have become
increasingly elusive in recent years, as federal lawmakers moved to
immunize gun dealers from such penalties.

Legislators in 2005
passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, preventing gun
makers and dealers from being held liable for crimes committed with
their products.

And, since 2003, lawmakers have increasingly
restricted public access to gun trace data, saying that easy access to
gun trace data violates the privacy of law-abiding gun owners.

Such changes have complicated Vice's crusade. But he remains undaunted.

"With our weak gun laws, public pressure often is the only way to shut down these corrupt gun dealers," he said.

Red flags vs.

profit pressure

O'Brien knows well the clues that suggest that a customer is a straw buyer.

A hovering boyfriend who picks the gun and answers O'Brien's questions but then has his girlfriend complete the paperwork.

A patron who consults with friends waiting in the parking lot outside before buying.

"People
asking for Glocks, because they hear about them in rapper songs," said
O'Brien, who has worked in the gun industry for 12 years. "I try to
steer them back to models more suited for first-time buyers, but they
say: 'No, I want a Glock.' And they don't know anything about Glocks or
guns at all."

But red flags trump profit.

"If I don't feel
right about a sale, I won't sell it," O'Brien said. "Because I'm white,
bald and tattooed, they think I'm racist when I refuse a sale."

And red flags pop up aplenty at the Bustleton shop, which was known until 2006 as C&C Sports Center under a previous owner.

The
Brady Center ranked C&C fifth in its list of the city's biggest
crime-gun dealers, with 204 crime guns traced back to it between 1996
and 2000. Three other gun shops on the Brady list have since closed.

But O'Brien and other staffers say that they've made many changes to discourage delinquents.

Surveillance
cameras monitor shop happenings. Customers enter and leave the shop
through double, locked doors. Ratting out lawbreakers is a point of
pride; O'Brien taped up a newspaper clipping hailing his shop's role in
helping police nab four felons who'd come to use the range last spring.

"We will do everything we can to get the bad element out of here," O'Brien said. "We don't want them here."

Posted: 11/3/2009 4:32:08 AM EDT

[#1]

"You can't stop gun crime without targeting the source, which is corrupt gun dealers,"

So the source of gun violence is gun dealers.

I should have known those bastards that take so much of my money were responsible for,gangs,drugs,glorified killing in popular music and the lack of families teaching right and wrong to kids.Jerks

Posted: 11/3/2009 4:38:43 AM EDT

[#2]

Maybe we should just pass a law that permits gun dealers to pistol-whip straw purchasers. I bet that would stop Bloomberg's thugs...

Posted: 11/3/2009 4:48:44 AM EDT

[#3]

"Don't Lie for the Other Guy"

is sexist

Posted: 11/3/2009 5:04:06 AM EDT

[#4]

I like the part about the boyfriend......and then the girlfriend fills out the paper work. Couldn't be that he knew more about guns than she did and they are there to get HER the gun.

Posted: 11/3/2009 5:11:04 AM EDT

[#5]

perhaps we should say governemnt causes poverty by giving hand outs and supporting laziness and lies.

Posted: 11/3/2009 5:18:55 AM EDT

[#6]

Fuck the Brady Bunch and whatever they talk/write/campaign about.

They are the enemy of freedom and liberty.

If they were on fire, I wouldn't piss on them to put out the flames.

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - "Don't Lie for the Other Guy" straw purchase article

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