From the New York Times, Monday, July 8th, 1996.  Article titled
FEDERAL PROGRAM WILL TRACK SALES OF GUNS TO YOUTHS, by Fox
Butterfield.
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President Clinton will announce today the creation of a Federal
computer system to track the illegal sale of guns to young people as
part of an initiative to help local police cut off the supply of those
firearms and halt the sharp rise in gun violence among young people.
In Boston, a pilot version of the program and increased police efforts
against guns nave been so successful that no juveniles have been killed
by guns this year, said the city's police commissioner, Paul Evans
Today, the police chiefs and prosecutors from 17 cities, including New
York, which has also had a pilot program, are to sign an agreement
at the White House voluntarily pledging to provide information on every
gun they seize from a juvenile during a crime. The data will be entered
into the Federal computer system, run by the Federal Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms. Each gun will be traced to its original seller
through documents and serial numbers to try to find who is selling guns
to juveniles. The gun traffickers will then be prosecuted.
Eventually, Federal officials say, the goal is to have all cities in
the nation join the program, giving the bureau more information with
which to identify illegal gun dealers.
"I've been in law enforcement for 25 years and this. is the most
powerful law-enforcement tool I have ever seen," said Joe Vince, the
chief of the bureau's firearms enforcement division.
The computerized data base and a new  software  program,  called
Project LEAD, represents an "astonishing" change in attitude and
tactics by the police, said David Kennedy, a senior researcher at the
John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard Unlversity, who helped
devise the project in Boston. Until recently, the police did little to
understand or disrupt the black market in guns, Mr. Kennedy said. When
they came across a gun used in a crime, the police simply locked it up
in their evidence room, not bothering to try to find out the source of
the weapon, as law-enforcement officers have long done with drugs.
One reason for this attitude, Mr. Kennedy said, has heen a belief that
there are so many firearms in the United States - about 220 million,
according to the firearms bureau - that It Is almost hopeless to try to
track down illegal gun dealers.
Another reason has been political sensitivity caused by the strong
opposition of the National Rifle Association to any form of gun
control. Congress, with the strong influence of the N.R.A., has long
kept financing for the firearms bureau as low as possible, delayed its
acquisition of computers and prevented It from establishIng a
computerized data base on the registration of guns.
A spokesman for the N.R.A. did not return repeated messages left at his
office and with his paging service seeking comment on the new program.
Rahm I. Emanuel, an assistant to President Clinton, said he doubted
the N.R.A. would oppose the plan. "Nobody wants to see adolescents
with firearms," Mr. Emanuel said.
Mr. Kennedy said the bureau has been working on its new computer
system for three years and that it is only recently that enough fIeld
testing has been done to suggest that the program can be successful.
It comes at a time, though, when Bob Dole, Mr. Clinton's probable
opponent in the November election, and other leading Republicans, like
Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, have been speaking about juvenile
crime, advocating legislation to try more juveniles as adults when they
are charged with violent crimes and to give them longer prison
sentences.
In a radio address on Saturday, Mr. Dole said, "Many of the rules
affecting juveniles were designed when the worst offenses committed
by teen-agers included joy riding and truancy."
The 17 cities involved in the program, all of which have shown an
interest in gun tracing, were selected in part to have participation
from cities of various sizes and from various regions. In addition to
New York and Boston, the cities are Atlanta, GA, Baltimore, MD,
Birmingham, AL, Bridgeport, CT, Inglewood, CA, Memphis, TN, Cleveland,
OH, Jersey City, NJ, Milwaukee, WI, Richmond, VA, St. Louis, MO,
Salinas, CA, San Antonio, TX, Seattle, WA, and Washington, DC.
It is already illegal under Federal law, and the laws of most states,
to sell handguns to juveniles, a factor that makes the President's
program easier to implement because it does not require the passage of
new legislation that could lead to a debate about gun control.
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