DOJ Leaders Focus on Gun Crimes as Summer Starts
The summer months traditionally see a spike in violent crime, with studies showing that when the weather gets warmer, violent crime rises.
To get ahead of that, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco recently convened a meeting to discuss strategies to crack down on violent gun crime.
Leaders of the DOJ Criminal Division, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), U.S. Marshals Service, and all 93 U.S. Attorneys attended the meeting.
In his opening remarks, Attorney General Garland emphasized the importance of “identifying, investigating, and prioritizing the prosecution of those who are responsible for the greatest violence in our communities” and he directed U.S. Attorneys to increase resources to crack down on gun crimes.
Bipartisan Safer Communities Act
The attorney general highlighted some of the new programs in effect after the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), which was signed into law by President Biden in June 2022.
The Act expanded background checks to include juvenile criminal and mental health records and local law enforcement contacts for gun buyers under the age of 21. DOJ says such checks have already kept nearly 1,000 firearms out of the hands of prohibited persons. DOJ also says it is working with state and local partners to keep them updated on all the changes.
The Act also narrowed the so-called “boyfriend loophole” to restrict firearm purchases by those convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence to include those convicted of assault in a “dating relationship.”
In addition, it created new criminal offenses for “unlawfully trafficking in firearms and for straw-purchasing a firearm on behalf of a prohibited person.” More than 100 people have already been charged with these new offenses and prosecutions for dealing in firearms without a license are up 51 percent from Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 levels.
On the funding front, BCSA authorized $1.4 billion for new and existing violence prevention and intervention programs, including training for school resource officers related to gun violence and youth mental health, education, and training on red flag laws.
Ghost Guns and Tracing
Attorney General Garland highlighted efforts to crack down on “ghost guns” or privately made firearms (PMF), which are harder to trace. DOJ says it has seized more than 10,000 PMFs domestically and 1,000 internationally so far in 2023. It recovered over 28,000 ghost guns in 2022.
Attorney General Garland also mentioned that the ATF National Tracing Center conducted 622,735 traces for firearms associated with crimes in 2022, a ten percent increase from 2021 and a 48 percent increase from 2017. The National Tracing Center is forecasting more than 675,000 traces by the end of 2023. In addition, nearly 10,000 law enforcement agencies now have access to eTrace, the online system that allows agencies to submit firearm traces to ATF.
DOJ also adopted an enhanced enforcement policy for federal licensed firearms dealers who “willfully violate the law.”