Locked and loaded: A look into how you might be able to carry a gun

Reporter: Chris BaylorEmail Address: chris.baylor@weau.com
The Wisconsin State Assembly plans to vote on whether to legalize concealed weapons next week. The senate passed it earlier this week and Governor Scott Walker says he'll sign it into law if it hits his desk.

With conceal carry making its way through the capitol; we wanted to know how the permit process will work. The bill being debated in Madison says the Department of Justice will handle the background checks and licensing but exactly how and what you'll need to submit is still being worked out.

A lot of people are getting locked and loaded ahead of a possible new conceal carry law.

"From a retail stand point handguns make up a big part of our sales now. They used to make up only about 25-30% now handguns make up 75% of our sales," says Owner of The Gun Exchange, Tom Gilbert.

He says conceal carry has been the talk of the store but one of the question has been, how will this work. The Wisconsin DOJ says the details are still being worked out. Right now it says if the bill becomes law, to start out the DOJ will have forms online for you to submit, something the Eau Claire County Sheriff says is a good idea.

"They do that for other professions, doctors, lawyers and others professionals so this would not be new to the DOJ to do this service," says Sheriff Ron Cramer.

Cramer says past bills have stated sheriff's departments would handle the background checks like other states.

“All indications from Minnesota, Florida, some of the states that have conceal carry where the sheriff's were doing the background checks; there was a flurry of applications at the start. My concern was the turnaround with the limited staff we have to be able to handle something of that nature," says Cramer.

Gilbert says along with buying guns, people are looking to learn how to use them safely.
"The popular guns are made for personal protection to carry and training stuff small caliber .22 and things for people to train with, there's been a lot of questions about training and education," says Gilbert.

The DOJ says if the bill passes it will evaluate other options to make the application process easier for anyone interested.

http://www.weau.com/news/headlines/Locked_and_loaded_A_look_into_how_you_might_be_able_to_carry_a_gun_124048299.html

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Top Brass Cited in Gun Sting

Emails Show ATF Director Involved in Troubled Operation Tied to Agent's Death

By EVAN PEREZ /WSJ

Lawmakers released documents showing that senior federal officials were closely involved in a troubled gun-enforcement operation that came to light after the death of a U.S. border agent in a shootout in December.

The disclosures came at an emotional House hearing at which family members of the agent testified. Republican lawmakers are pressing to determine how high up knowledge and approval of the program went in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and its parent agency, the Justice Department.

Two assault rifles purchased at a gun store that was part of an ATF probe called Fast and Furious were found at the scene of the Arizona shooting in which the 40-year-old agent, Brian Terry, lost his life. The program was created to monitor weapons purchases by suspected gun traffickers. Agency officials hoped eventually to build a case against major arms smugglers serving Mexican drug cartels.

Republican lawmakers leading an investigation of Fast and Furious say the ATF didn't have the means to track the guns and should have known that such tactics were dangerous.

At a hearing by the House oversight committee Wednesday, three ATF agents made scathing assessments of decisions by agency officials to refrain from arrests and allow suspected illicit gun purchases to proceed. Agent Peter Forcelli said Fast and Furious exhibited a "colossal failure of leadership."

The hearing also highlighted partisan differences, as agents raised concerns about existing gun laws one called "toothless." They partly blamed the laws for the aggressive ATF tactics now under scrutiny. Democratic lawmakers at the hearing pounced on those comments to urge consideration of new laws to address the problem of "straw purchasers," small-time buyers who purchase firearms on behalf of cartel smugglers. Many GOP lawmakers, and pro-gun Democrats, oppose new laws.

Mr. Terry's mother and sister sat beside his cousin, Robert Heyer, at the hearing as he tearfully read a statement on behalf of the family. Mr. Heyer spoke of the family's anguish at learning of Mr. Terry's death in a phone call in the middle of the night 10 days before Christmas. He recounted how relatives received presents Mr. Terry had mailed shortly before he was killed.

"We ask that if a government official made a wrong decision, they admit their error and take responsibility for his or her actions," he said.

Rep. Darrell Issa of California, chairman of the committee, and Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, released internal ATF emails that identified the senior officials involved, including Kenneth Melson, the bureau's acting director.

One email among ATF officials describes Mr. Melson's request for the Internet link to hidden cameras the ATF had planted in gun shops cooperating with the Fast and Furious probe, Mr. Issa said, citing the documents. That allowed Mr. Melson to watch a live feed of suspected straw buyers purchasing AK-47-style rifles, Mr. Issa said.
The Justice Department has said the operation never was intended to let weapons be trafficked to Mexico. Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered an investigation of the operation.

An ATF spokesman declined to comment, citing the investigation.

Ronald Weich, assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, testified but gave few details of the program. Mr. Weich said that if the investigation found "flawed strategies" or "insufficient surveillance of weapons," the responsible officials would be held to account. The agents cited the reluctance by some prosecutors to bring charges in gun-trafficking cases as another reason why the ATF operation came about. Law-enforcement officials say it's hard to bring cases. They cite a case in 2008 that was dismissed by an Arizona federal judge, who ruled there was insufficient evidence to charge a man with being an unlicensed gun dealer although he sold 400 firearms. The judge said there wasn't enough proof of profit-making.

A congressional report produced ahead of the hearing included testimony from four Phoenix ATF agents, who described how they and other agents battled supervisors. The dissenting agents said they wanted to make arrests instead of allowing illicit guns into circulation, fearing they would lead to deaths. Supervisors insisted that the investigation proceed, aiming to trace them to weapons traffickers, the congressional report shows.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, of Maryland, the top Democrat on the oversight panel, called the committee's findings so far "very troubling." He cited testimony that instead of agents following the guns, "surveillance of suspected straw purchasers was discontinued repeatedly, seemingly for no reason, so agents could return to gun stores to start over with new suspects."

ATF agents interviewed by congressional investigators described supervisors trying to tamp down agents' misgivings about the strategy to allow the weapons purchases.
An April 2010 email from an ATF agent in Mexico City to a bureau official, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, discussed plans to provide a classified briefing to Mr. Issa's own committee about several cases, including Fast and Furious. A spokesman for Mr. Issa said that the congressman wasn't briefed on specifics of the operation and that staffers who attended the briefing don't recall the operation being mentioned.
Write to Evan Perez at evan.perez@wsj.com
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304186404576387633640546672.html#

Report describes gun agents' 'state of panic'

Federal gun agents, concerned about weapons sales to Mexican drug suspects, begged to make arrests but were rebuffed, according to a congressional report on a controversial investigation.

By Kim Murphy
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
6:30 PM PDT, June 14, 2011
Seattle

Federal gun agents in Arizona -- convinced that "someone was going to die" when their agency allowed weapons sales to suspected Mexican drug traffickers -- made anguished pleas to be permitted to make arrests but were rebuffed, according to a new congressional report on the controversial law enforcement probe.

Agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives told congressional investigators that there was "a state of panic" that the guns used in the shooting of U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in January and two U.S. agents in Mexico a month later might have been sold under the U.S. surveillance operation.

"I used the word anxiety. The term I used amongst my peers is pucker factor," Larry Alt, special agent with ATF's Phoenix field division, told investigators preparing a joint staff report for Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The report will be released Wednesday in Washington, D.C.

Neither of those shootings was ultimately linked to the "Fast and Furious" probe, though two weapons sold to a suspect under surveillance were found at the scene of the fatal shooting of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry near Nogales, Ariz., in December.

Terry's family will be among the key witnesses at an oversight committee hearing Wednesday on the ATF operation, under which the bureau allowed purchases of high-powered weapons in an attempt to track their progress into the hands of Mexican drug cartels. According to the report and numerous interviews with The Times, several ATF agents regarded the operation as dangerous and misguided.

At least 195 of the weapons have been traced to Mexico, found mainly at crime scenes, but ATF agents quoted in the report said more than 1,700 firearms were trafficked "to known criminals or cartel elements south of the border and elsewhere" under the operation.

"I cannot see anyone who has one iota of concern for human life being OK with this," Agent John Dodson told committee interviewers.

In one case, Agent Pete Forcelli told the interviewers, an agent was making insistent calls over the radio, saying that gun traffickers had recognized him and begging for permission to stop the suspects. "But he was told to not stop the car with the guns in it," he said.

Dodson said the target was followed picking up money, buying guns and dropping them off somewhere else but recognized he was being followed and made obvious attempts to evade the surveillance. "I mean, there is a verbal screaming match over the radio about how -- what are you talking about? There is no better time or reason to pull this guy over than right now," Dodson related.

Issa and Grassley have been butting heads with ATF supervisors and senior officials at the Justice Department who signed off on the Project Gunrunner operation, which was intended to begin catching the powerful drug cartel traffickers in Mexico and the U.S. who were receiving weapons from the relatively low-level "straw purchasers" who were paid to buy them from U.S. gun dealers.

The two agencies, the Republican congressmen say, have refused to provide documents about the origin, direction and supervision of the operation.

The Justice Department has provided some information, but officials say disclosing their files now could compromise the trial of the traffickers accused of purchasing the weapons found at the scene of Terry's killing, and also that of one of the suspected border bandits, Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, 34, who was arrested at the scene of the Terry shootout and faces charges of second-degree murder.

"Fighting criminal activity along the Southwest border -- including the illegal trafficking of guns to Mexico -- has been a priority of this administration and this Department of Justice. The attorney general takes the allegations that have been raised by some ATF agents about the Fast and Furious operation seriously, which is why he has asked the inspector general to investigate the matter," Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said, adding that the department had made it clear that "under no circumstances should guns be allowed to cross the border into Mexico."

In a letter Monday to Issa, ranking House oversight committee member Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.) said that pursuing the probe now broke with past committee policy of standing down until criminal prosecutions are complete. "We're all for conducting a responsible investigation to out any wrongdoing," said Ashley Etienne, Democratic committee spokeswoman. "But we can't do it at the expense of bringing these guys to justice."

kim.murphy@latimes.com

Copyright © 2011, Los Angeles Times

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-0615-gunrunner,0,3424418,print.story

Report: Most guns seized in Mexico from US

Drug war has cost more than 35,000 lives since late 2006

MEXICO CITY — About 70 percent of the guns seized in Mexico and submitted to a U.S. gun-tracing program came from the United States, according to a report released by three U.S. senators Monday.

Of the 29,284 firearms recovered by authorities in Mexico in 2009 and 2010, 20,504 came from the United States, according to figures provided to the senators by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Most of those weapons — 15,131 — were U.S. made, while another 5,373 were of foreign manufacture but had moved through the United States into Mexico.

The ATF said the remainder of the weapons total — 8,780 arms — were of "undetermined origin due to insufficient information provided."

The figure of the number of guns arriving in Mexico from north of the border has been polemical ever since a June 2009 U.S. report covering earlier years said that 87 percent of guns seized in Mexico came from the United States.

Story: Teen, 2 kids and 2 women die in Mexico shooting

While the report did not specify why the percentage had changed, the most recent figures appear to included more gun-trace reports, as the reporting program in Mexico became easier to use.

Evidence that U.S. weapons trafficking has been fueling a bloody drug war that has cost more than 35,000 lives in Mexico since late 2006 has angered many Mexicans.

President lashes out On Saturday, in a speech to the Mexican-American community in San Jose, California, President Felipe Calderon lashed out at the U.S. weapons industry.

"I accuse the U.S. weapons industry of (responsibility for) the deaths of thousands of people that are occurring in Mexico," Calderon said. "It is for profit, for the profits that it makes for the weapons industry."

The report, issued by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and two other senators, recommended background checks for sales at gun shows, a ban on the import of nonsporting weapons and the reinstatement of the assault weapons ban in force in the United States until 2004.

Calderon endorsed calls for reinstating the ban on domestic sales of assault rifles, saying its expiration in 2004 may have played a roll in the increase of drug violence in Mexico.

"You can clearly see how the violence began to grow in 2005, and of course it has gone on an upward spiral in the last six years," Calderon said.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Kids, guns and doctors' rights

Physicians say firearms safety is a matter of public health; the NRA says it’s a privacy issue

By Chelsea Conaboy

Globe Staff / June 13, 2011

Pediatricians regularly give parents advice about how to keep their children safe at home: Stash toxic cleaners where young children cannot get to them, fence the backyard swimming pool, require bike helmets, and keep any firearms unloaded and locked away.

Physicians call this kind of preventive care “anticipatory guidance.’’ When it comes to guns, the National Rifle Association calls it an invasion of privacy.

Governor Rick Scott this month signed a law making Florida the first state to limit a physician’s ability to ask patients or their parents whether they own a gun. Those who do would be subject to discipline by the state medical board. Similar proposals now being considered by several other states have enraged many doctors who say the law impinges on their ability to deliver critical information to families.

“This is not an even-steven discussion,’’ said Dr. Joel Alpert, a pediatrician and assistant dean at Boston University School of Medicine, who is past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “This is child health against a paranoid fear about guns being taken away from someone.’’

At the heart of the issue is whether guns are a matter of public health. Supporters of the law say that they are not.

“For a doctor to be able to do his or her job, they don’t need to know whether a person owns a firearm or not,’’ said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam.

The idea that firearms are out of bounds for doctors, who are committed to preventing illness and injury, is preposterous, opponents said. Between 2003 and 2007, the most recent years for which data are available, 152,519 people were killed by firearms, more than 15,000 children and teenagers, according to a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention database that collects information from death certificates. In the same period, 138 Massachusetts children and teenagers were killed by firearms, the bulk of which were homicides. That’s more than twice the number killed while riding in a motor vehicle.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that doctors talk with families about the safe storage of guns, which can include storing ammunition separately and using a gun safe or a trigger lock. Several physicians interviewed for this story said they have supported or helped to organize programs to hand out free locks or buy back guns.

“It would almost be malpractice if the doctor didn’t talk about guns,’’ said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, and author of the book “Private Guns, Public Health.’’

The Florida law sets a bad precedent of allowing government to reach into the exam room to tell doctors, “for clearly political reasons,’’ what they can and can’t talk about, Hemenway saidThis is not the first time this issue has been debated by lawmakers.

Legislators in Virginia and West Virginia voted against similar laws in 2006. West Virginia is considering the proposal again, along with North Carolina and Minnesota. Alabama postponed a vote in April.

Represented by the Washington, D.C., office of Ropes & Gray and the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, the Florida chapters of several physician groups have filed a lawsuit asking that the state’s law be thrown out. The suit claims the law is unconstitutional and could result in “grievous harm’’ to families and children denied information about gun safety.

The Florida Medical Association is not a party to the suit. The association negotiated with sponsors to tone down the original bill, which called for steep financial penalties and jail time, and supported the measure in the end. The final version includes broad language allowing doctors to talk with patients about guns when considered medically necessary or when physicians are concerned about patient safety.

But Dr. Louis St. Petery, executive vice president of the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the law will have a chilling effect, and it opens the door for other states to enact similar measures. Plus, he said, a referral to the board of medicine is not something doctors take lightly.

Though no such proposal has been introduced here, the Massachusetts Medical Society last month took preemptive action at its annual meeting. Members passed a resolution saying they oppose any legislative interference in their ability to take a person’s medical history or to talk with families about guns. The resolution also requested that the American Medical Association take a strong stance against such limits.

The resolution was put forward by Dr. Michael Hirsh, head surgeon at UMass Memorial Children’s Medical Center. Hirsh became interested in gun control in 1981, when his best friend and fellow resident at New York-Presbyterian Hospital was shot and killed on the street. Since then, Hirsh has helped organize gun buy-back programs in Worcester and other cities.

On the Florida law, he said, “I just don’t want to see this wave of stupidity come anywhere where sane people might understand this is going to affect kids.’’

He pointed to the recent death of a 3-year-old South Carolina girl who reportedly picked up her mother’s loaded handgun from a windowsill and was killed when it fired. Those are the kinds of tragedies that doctors try to prevent, he said.

But Arulanandam said doctors have no formal gun safety program like the one that the NRA offers. Its Eddie Eagle program taught at least 1 million children about gun safety last year, he said. Its primary message to kids: If you see a gun, leave it alone and tell an adult.

Jim Wallace, executive director of the Gun Owners’ Action League, a Massachusetts affiliate of the NRA, said the questioning from doctors is invasive and “doesn’t lead to trust.’’ He said he did not know of any efforts to bring the issue up before Massachusetts legislators, who historically have supported strict gun control. But he said his group could raise the matter if it heard from members that the questioning from doctors had become “overly intrusive.’’

Arulanandam did not answer questions about how those families that the Eddie Eagle program does not reach should learn about gun safety or whether people other than doctors also should be prohibited from asking whether a person owns a gun.

“Our simple point is this: This is a privacy issue, doctors don’t need to know this information to provide the care that they give, and certainly people should be entitled to their privacy,’’ he said.

When asked why the NRA does not simply counsel its members not to answer doctors’ questions if they feel uncomfortable, he said, “Why not make sure that people don’t ask the question to begin with?’’

He went on to say that the NRA cares about the First Amendment as much as it cares about the Second. But several doctors said they are concerned about what other conversations — those about birth control or sexual behavior, for example — conservative groups might aim to limit if this law stands.

“They’re putting government into the doctor’s office,’’ BU’s Alpert said.

Chelsea Conaboy can be reached at cconaboy@boston.com.

© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.

 

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