By Ed Somers
September 25, 2006

The House Committee on the Judiciary has approved two anti-gun safety bills opposed by the Conference of Mayors. Despite some minor improvements made in committee, the bills would still protect those who buy and sell guns illegally.

This action came as the FBI released final crime statistics for 2005 which showed that murders increased by 3.44 percent, the largest increase in 14 years, and total violent crimes increased by 2.3 percent, the largest increase in ten years.

Mayors are urged to contact their House members and urge that they vote no on these bills if they reach the floor.

H.R. 5005 would:

• Write into law and make retroactive the restrictions on disclosure and use of ATF trace data that are in the current appropriations bill;

• Restrict information sharing between law enforcement agencies of different jurisdictions to specific criminal case investigative use;

• Provide that multiple sales of handguns would no longer need to be reported to state or local law enforcement; they would be reported only to ATF (local governments could request the data);

• Codify and make permanent the rule that forbids ATF from computerizing its records of gun sales by firms that have gone out of business; and

• Allow importation of replacement and repair parts for banned guns.

H.R. 5092 would:

• Relax the recordkeeping requirements on federal firearms licensees (FFLs); and

• Set up procedures that would make it harder for ATF to revoke their licenses.

A third bill opposed by the Conference, H.R. 1384, was not acted upon by the Committee. It would have made it easier to be a gun trafficker, by allowing federally licensed dealers to sell handguns to people from out of state, and allowing gun shows to include buyers and sellers from anywhere in the country.