Saturday, July 26, 2014

Despite rhetoric, gun prosecutions plummet under Obama

While President Obama decries gun violence and presses for more laws to restrict ownership, his Justice Department has prosecuted 25 percent fewer cases referred by the main law enforcement agency charged with reducing firearms violence across the country, a computer analysis of U.S. prosecution data shows. Federal prosecutors brought a total of 5,082 gun violation cases in 2013 recommended by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, compared with 6,791 during the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency in 2008, according to data obtained from the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys. The 2013 totals represent a 42 percent decline from the record number of 8,752 prosecutions of ATF cases brought by the Justice Department in 2004 under Mr. Bush, according to the data. Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, regarded as one of the premier researchers on federal prosecution performances and trends, analyzed the data at the request of The Washington Times. U.S. attorneys have been slowing gun prosecutions even further, with 2,598 brought in the first seven months of this fiscal year. The pace of activity puts the Justice Department on track to prosecute the fewest ATF cases since 2000, well before the drug gang wars in Mexico sharply increased violence on both sides of the border. “We have this irony. The Obama administration, which is asking for more in the way of gun regulations — in terms of increased background checks for private sales and at gun shows — is actually prosecuting less of the gun laws already on the books,” said Robert Cottrol, a gun control historian at George Washington University. “For a lot of people, there’s more ideological cache harassing Bubba at the gun show than getting a handle on gun crime.”...more

1 comment:

Food for Thought said...

So have the violations dropped as well?