Firearms And Federal Law: The Gun Control Act of 1968

III. MEASURING THE EFFECTS OF THE ACT

With relatively minor amendments,[138] the Gun Control Act of 1968 has been the governing federal firearms control policy for more than five years, a period sufficient to invite inquiry about its impact. This part of the article (1) presents data on the administration of the Act, (2) explores the rate of civilian acquisition and use of handguns after the "Saturday Night Special" ban, and (3) analyzes how the act affected the interstate flow of handguns into states and cities that attempt to restrict gun ownership.

A. Administering the Act

One important lesson to be derived from studying the Federal Firearms Act of 1938 is the critical role played by those who administer and enforce firearms legislation. Enforcement of the 1968 Act¾as was the case with the two prior efforts at firearms control¾was vested in the Department of the Treasury and, within the Treasury, in the Bureau of Internal Revenue. In 1942 the Commissioner of Internal Revenue assigned firearms enforcement responsibility to a division within his bureau that supervised the tax collection, regulation and criminal enforcement functions of federal law in relation to alcohol and tobacco. The Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms Division (A.T.F.) had a central office in Washington, with a director who was subordinate to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, and seven regional administrators, each responsible to the Regional Director of the Internal Revenue Service. In 1972 the Treasury reorganized A.T.F. as a separate bureau, no longer under the Commissioner of Internal Revenue.[139]
The old A.T.F. division had been responsible for both criminal enforcement and regulatory enforcement of federal firearms laws since 1951, but firearms regulation had a relatively low priority and a small share of the division’s manpower was detailed to firearms enforcement.[140] The Gun Control Act of [Page 158] 1968 and support within the Administration for firearms regulations shifted the manpower priorities of A.T.F. rather quickly. During fiscal 1968, the last full fiscal year prior to the Act, 311 man-years were listed as devoted to firearms enforcement.[141] In fiscal 1970, the first full year after the Act went into effect, enforcement effort was reported as 814 man-years.[142] Thus, an early impact of the Act and of the interest in gun regulation that motivated its passage was to put the federal government in the firearms regulation business at a level of manpower that was much greater than in prior years.
The two major areas in which A. T. F. invests manpower are "regulatory enforcement" and "criminal enforcement" of the federal firearms laws.[143] Regulatory enforcement is the supervision of federal licensees¾importers, manufacturers, and dealers. At the dealer level, the key tasks of regulatory enforcement are the investigation of initial applications for dealer licenses and compliance investigations to determine whether dealers are conducting business in accord with federal law. The investigation of an initial application involves an inspection of the proposed premises, a background investigation of the applicant, and an interview about the nature of the business that is contemplated. A compliance investigation involves re-inspection of business premises, inspection of the dealer’s records, and an audit of a few firearms transaction report forms to determine whether the information is recorded properly and whether a check of the customer’s listed address and criminal record shows any violation of federal law. Apparent violations of law may, in the agent’s discretion, be referred to the criminal investigation staff in the same A.T.F. office for further investigation.
A larger share of A.T.F. manpower is devoted to criminal enforcement activities by special agents with arrest powers.[144] While regulatory enforcement is focused on dealers with federal licenses, criminal enforcement activities are devoted to the broad spectrum of illegal firearms possession and traffic. A relatively small part of criminal enforcement work involves licensed dealers-estimated at less than 30 per cent, with no precise breakdown available.[145] Other types of investigation include undercover work to find black-market sellers, investigation of persons who are suspected of illegal possession as a result of information passed on by regulatory enforcement [Page 159] staff, local police or informants, and investigation of persons who are special targets of local or federal authorities.
Available statistics, though incomplete, give some indication of A. T. F. performance after the Gun Control Act of 1968 came into existence. As to regulation, the first effect of the Act was to generate the need to make a large number of investigations of applications for dealer licenses. The Treasury had hoped that raising the annual fee for federal dealer licenses to ten dollars and instituting standards for -granting licenses would reduce the number of persons applying for licenses, thereby making meaningful regulation of dealer activities feasible. But the higher fee was offset by the fact that, after the Act, the only way to receive firearms in interstate commerce was to obtain a federal license. The number of dealer and collector licenses in effect never dropped below 60,000[146] and is presently estimated at 160,000, compared to about 100,000 during the early 1960s.[147]
The need to investigate license applications reduced the manpower available for compliance investigations and, to some extent, for criminal enforcement initiatives. The press of putting the law into effect, and the decentralized tradition of A.T.F. activities, also put limits on the ability of A.T.F. to invest resources in strategic planning to define priority problems and measure the effectiveness of regulatory and criminal enforcement efforts. And the focus on initial applications and other "start-up costs" associated with the Act were followed, in 1970, by a federal law requiring A.T.F. to regulate explosives.[148]
Yet criminal enforcement activities did pick up substantially, as shown by the summary data on federal firearms cases for the fiscal years 1968-1973 in Table 1.

TABLE 1 FEDERAL FIREARMS LAW CASES RECOMMENDED FOR PROSECUTION, INDICTMENT AND CONVICTIONS BY FISCAL YEAR¾1968-73
		1968	1969	1970	1971	1972	1973
Cases Recommended for
	Prosecution by A.T.F.	375	1341	3212	3407	4031	3283
Indictments		175	331	1309	1888	2444	2257
Convictions		89	178	577	1148	1451	1719
Source: U.S. Treasury Dep't. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Statistics Division.

[Page 160]
As Table 1 shows, cases recommended for prosecution rose from 375 during fiscal 1968 (the last full year before the passage of the Act) to over 3200 during 1970 (the first full fiscal year after). Convictions, which occur some time after enforcement efforts end, increased from 89 during fiscal 1968 to 1148 during fiscal 1971.
Some data are available on the pattern of criminal enforcement before and after the Gun Control Act. The statistics division of A.T.F. records information on charges recommended and results by the title in the Gun Control Act under which charges were recommended. This gives some indication of the type of activity that led to the recommendation of charges, because Title II of the Gun Control Act deals with machine guns, sawed-off shotguns, and destructive devices subject to special taxes and registration, while Title VII of the Act deals exclusively with the receipt or possession of firearms by prohibited classes. This type of reporting does not give an accurate picture of the extent of enforcement activity relating to interstate flow of weapons, inasmuch as Title I of the Act, which prohibits such transfers, also prohibits dealing in firearms without a federal license and a variety of other activities.[149] Table 2 shows the pattern of criminal enforcement by fiscal year for A.T.F. referrals for prosecution.
The figures in Table 2 suggest a continued heavy emphasis by A.T.F. on

TABLE 2 PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION OF CASES REFERRED FOR PROSECUTION BY TYPE OF CHARGE BY FISCAL YEAR 1968-73
		1968	1969	1970	1971	1972	1973
National Firearms Act
	Charges (N.F.A. Title II of the Gun Control Act
		55	49	36	42	39	39
Prohibited Persons Re-
	ceiving or Possessing a Firearma (Federal Firearm Act and Title VII of the Gun Control Act
		39	39	35	34	27	29
Title I of Gun Control Act				22	19	30	28
Combined Chargesb		5	12	7	5	4	4
	Total	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
		(375)	(1341)	(3212)	(3407)	(4031)	(3283)
a Includes any case with a Title VII recommendation.b Excludes Title VII cases. Source: U.S. Treasury Dep't, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, Statistics Division.

[Page 161]
the special class of weapons regulated under the provisions of the amended National Firearms Act (heavy in relation to the number of such weapons in circulation), and indicate that at least as many prosecutions are recommended because a prohibited person has been found in possession of or has received a firearm as are the result of detecting violations of the ban on sales to nonstate residents and illegal transportation and sales.
What these figures do not show is the proportion of A.T.F. enforcement effort that is devoted to the "state aid" aims of the Act, or the impact of A.T.F. criminal enforcement on the flow of guns. No figures are kept on the proportion of criminal enforcement effort or referrals that relate to dealers or major traffickers, or on the number of firearms involved in the transactions investigated.
A humbling comparison can be made between the enforcement resources available to A.T.F. and the size of the problem it is charged with policing. About 5,000,000 new firearms were sold on the civilian market in 1973, and approximately the same number of used firearms changed hands. Audits of firearms transaction records show apparent irregularity in a large enough proportion of these to generate several hundred thousand criminal investigations a year if all transaction forms were audited, and that is not the major source of the illegal interstate movement of firearms.[150] There may be as many as half a million violations of the Gun Control Act of 1968 each year, with most of them at least one step beyond the record system imposed on dealers and first-purchasers. Criminal investigation of transfers outside the record system requires a considerable amount of manpower, invested in proactive police work aimed at detecting victimless crime. Under these conditions the primary determinant of the degree of enforcement will be the resources committed to enforcement. And as the dip in case referrals for 1973 might suggest, manpower allocated to A.T.F. firearms enforcement has remained relatively stable in the past two years.[151]
If limited manpower is one major constraint on achieving the "state aid" purposes of the Act, lack of information on the pattern of illicit traffic in firearms has also proved to be a major obstacle. Prior to 1972 there were no major investigations by the Bureau of where the firearms that were frustrating state and local gun control efforts came from. A series of studies of interstate handgun traffic was begun in 1972 and will be referred to in the discussion of the impact of the law on the interstate gun problem. Information [Page 162] on the number of firearms produced in the United States was not compiled by A.T.F. until 1972, and data on firearms sales in the various states and regions are still not available.
A further limit on the ultimate effectiveness of A.T.F.’s enforcement effort has been the types of firearms traffic left uncontrolled under the Act and the regulations established to govern its enforcement. Detailed records of firearms transfer by dealers are now required, but these records are kept by the dealer and are only accessible to the Bureau during compliance investigations or when agents are alerted to a particular gun or dealer as a result of other information.[152] Whatever value firearms transaction records would have -in providing. a picture of retail firearms traffic and in putting the Bureau on notice of special high-risk high-volume sales patterns-was sacrificed to decentralization. And nondealer gun transfers-probably 30 per cent of total gun traffic and a far higher proportion of illegal sales[153]¾are not subject to any federal record-keeping requirement.
A final limit on the effectiveness of Bureau efforts is the sheer volume of firearms in civilian hands. Regulation of firearms traffic as a whole differs from efforts to control submachine guns and hand grenades, not in degree but in kind. The number of National Firearms Act weapons in civilian hands in the United States is small, and federal law was explicitly designed to keep ownership low.[154] Civilian firearms ownership exceeds 100,000,000,[155] and any federal efforts at regulation must involve only a small percentage of gun transactions or an enormous regulatory effort. For example, the director of A.T.F. reported an estimated 25,000 dealer-compliance investigations during fiscal 1973;[156] a sample of 100 such investigations conducted by the Chicago regional office showed an average of five firearms transaction forms were traced for criminal record and address verification in the course of each investigation. If that approximates the national average, about 125,000 transactions a year are verified in the course of the Bureau’s regulatory enforcement. That is an impressive workload, but still constitutes less than two per cent of the annual retail commerce in guns.
Notwithstanding its limits, efforts to effectuate the Gun Control Act reflect a much more serious commitment of resources and support than resulted from the Federal Firearms Act of 1938, and the 1968 Act is worthy of more attention than it has previously received. [Page 163]

B. The Saga of the "Saturday Night Special"

As previously discussed, the Gun Control Act prohibited the importation of all military surplus firearms and any other firearms unless the Secretary of the Treasury found them to be generally recognized as "particularly suitable for or readily adapted to sporting purposes."[157] This section discusses the interpretation of that provision, the impact of the law as interpreted on handgun importation, sales, and misuse, and the consequences of the "Saturday Night Special" ban on the federal firearms control debates of the 1970s.
I have previously suggested that the operative provisions of section 925(d) could have been interpreted as giving the Secretary of the Treasury power to end all firearms importation into the United States.[158] That reading, heavily dependent on the fact that the Secretary was not required to issue any import authorization, was never given any serious consideration in discussions of the Act[159] or in the regulations issued under it.[160] The argument against such a reading is strong: why would Congress so obliquely delegate to the Treasury the power to determine at will whether firearms could be imported, and why would Congress establish criteria for importation if it was delegating the power to ignore them? In any event, the Internal Revenue Service read section 925(d)(3) as requiring the Service to permit the importation of all firearms that met the standards established by subsection (3), and the "sporting purposes" test became the border between permissible and impermissible importation.[161]
Construing this provision created no major difficulty in the regulation of shotguns and rifles, for different reasons. The bulk of the foreign-made shotguns imported into the United States are of high quality and reputation. While these weapons were a major competitive challenge to American manufacturers, it would be hard to imagine a "sporting purposes" test that would exclude a large number of them. Rifle imports presented no major interpretation problem under 925(d)(3) because surplus military weapons, constituting the bulk of low-priced rifles during the late 1950s and 1960s, were excluded from the United States whether or not they were particularly suitable for sporting purposes.[162] Rifle imports dropped somewhat after the Act [Page 164] went into effect, while shotgun imports more than doubled between 1968 and 1973.[163]
The hard questions concerning the "sporting purposes" test related to handguns, because the handgun, whether domestic or imported, is not primarily a sporting weapon. In contrast to rifles and shotguns, handguns are owned more frequently in cities than in rural areas, are rarely used to hunt with, and are viewed by consumers as weapons of self-defense.[164] Handguns are carried by some hunters as a "finishing weapon" for killing wounded animals, and are widely used for informal target practice ("plinking"). But it is unclear whether these uses would or should have been considered sporting purposes, nor is it clear what kind of handguns should be considered generally recognized as particularly suited to shooting at tin cans. The essential problem, then, was that the "sporting purposes" test was something of a non sequitur when applied to handguns, because the great majority of them were not, in any event, intended for sporting purposes.
Under these circumstances, interpreting the "sporting purposes" standard was bound to cause problems. One approach would have been to prohibit the importation of any pistols or revolvers. This was apparently within the power of the Treasury but would have produced a storm of partially justified criticism, since Congress had not explicitly singled out handguns for exclusion. A second approach would have been for the Internal Revenue Service to issue regulations requiring importers to establish to its satisfaction that a particular shipment of handguns would be used for shooting-sports activities. Though this interpretation would doubtless have produced controversy, it seems most clearly in line with a congressional "sporting purposes" test: why should such a test govern importation decisions if congressional intent were not to allow the importation of only sporting weapons? Such a regulation could be justified for handguns, as opposed to rifles and shotguns, because long guns were, as a class, generally regarded as sporting weapons, while handguns were not.[165] The effect of this kind of regulation, if the burden of proof rested on the importer in each case, would have been to reduce handgun imports drastically and confine the import market to target pistols for which domestic substitutes were either unavailable or so much more expensive that seeking permission to import the weapons would be worth its considerable trouble. Whether this would have resulted in substantially re- [Page 165] ducing total handgun sales or handgun violence is a question to be considered later.
The approach taken by the Internal Revenue Service was to establish a system for grading pistols and revolvers, together with a list of approved guns that could be imported with relatively little red tape. Guns without specified safety accessories, or understated minimum size, were excluded. The import criteria for grading other weapons included gun and barrel length, type of frame construction, and weight. And the Service reserved the right "to preclude importation of any revolver or pistol which achieves an apparent qualifying score but does not adhere to the provisions of section 925(d)(3) of . . . Ch. 44, Title 18, U.S.C."[167]
The impact of these "Factoring Criteria for Weapons" was to exclude very small handguns and those without safety devices, and to create standards of frame construction and handgun weight to qualify for import. The weight requirement would differ with different weapons, because deficiencies in weight can be compensated for -by the presence of target equipment, safety features, or other graded items.[168]
There is a ring of arbitrariness about a single "passing score" determining whether or not a handgun is a "Saturday Night Special"¾a revolver with a 44-point score would not be approved, whereas one with 46 points became "particularly suited to sporting purposes." But the "Factoring Criteria for Weapons" did give a measure of certainty to the process of approving or disapproving handguns for importation. Perhaps the standards gave a bit too much certainty, in that foreign manufacturers could integrate U.S. specifications into the design of handguns.
The theories behind the various criteria chosen by the Commissioner are not explicitly set out in any public documents. Frame length and barrel length of a handgun are relevant to its concealability, and very short handguns are not likely to be used for formal target shooting. Weapon weight and frame construction may be related to durability. Safety features make it less likely that a handgun will discharge accidentally, particularly when dropped. The caliber of a handgun may be of some relevance to the likelihood of its being used for a sporting purpose (high-caliber handguns receive extra points), yet the majority of handguns used for informal "plinking" are .22 caliber, if only because .22 caliber ammunition is relatively inexpensive.
Taken together, the standards employ criteria that are to some degree relevant measures of handgun quality, whether a handgun is used for self-defense [Page 166] or sporting purposes. But neither the criteria nor the cutoff points (45 for revolvers, 75 for pistols) have become accepted standards for defining the "Saturday Night Special." In 1973, A.T.F. attempted to determine the proportion of guns in a sample of confiscated handguns that could be classified as "Saturday Night Specials." Instead of using the "Factoring Criteria for Weapons" cutoff, the Bureau used three different standards-guns retailing for less than $50, guns with a barrel length of three inches or less, and guns of .32 caliber or less. "[T]he problem of determining what percentage of the total guns traced fell in the category of ‘Saturday Night Specials’ was resolved by taking the total number of guns in each of these three categories, adding the totals, and dividing by three to arrive at what was called a ‘composite’ average."[169]
What is remarkable about the series of events that led to the "Factoring Criteria" and the list of foreign firearms approved for importation is the persistent nondefinition of the key terms in the controlling federal law. We have now traced through the three significant levels of congressional and agency declaration-the statute itself, the regulations issued to implement the statute, and the "factoring criteria for weapons." At no point in this sequence is the phrase "particularly suitable for sporting purposes" or any of its constituent terms explicitly defined. Yet at the end of this process, A.T.F. had created a set of precise criteria to govern the importation of handguns!
A major share of the responsibility for this state of affairs belongs to the draftsmen of section 925(d) and to Congress. The "sporting purposes" test was ill-suited to the task of sorting out foreign handguns, yet handgun imports were the only significant issue to be decided by that standard. While the agency charged with responsibility for administering the Act could have made a wholesale determination that almost all handguns were barred from importation, a clearer congressional mandate for such a controversial step would have been desirable.
The jurisprudence of the entire "Saturday Night Special" issue is also interesting. The attack against cheap imported handguns was powerful but pitifully underinclusive. Handguns retailing for under $50 are a major public safety problem-but so are those retailing for over $50. Imported handguns were an important part of the urban arms race of the late 1960s, but so were domestic handguns.[170] To focus on "cheap imports" created the need to find the kind of fault with these guns that would not generalize too quickly. The various complaints lodged against the "Saturday Night Special" were thus somewhat peripheral to the central problems of handgun misuse¾[Page 167] and these distortions are faithfully reflected in the standards governing handgun imports in 1974.
The effect of the import restriction on handgun importation was immediate and dramatic, as shown in Table 3, using data from the Bureau of the Census.

TABLE 3 HANDGUN IMPORTS BY YEAR, 1965-73
	1964	253,000	1969	349,252
	1965	346,906	1970	226,516
	1966	513,019	1971	345,557
	1967	747,013	1972	293,343
	1968	1,155,368	1973	309,471
Source: U.S. Bureau of the Census, Foreign Trade Division, FT246¾U.S. Imports for Consumption 1964-73.

Handgun imports in 1969, the first year under the Gun Control Act, were less than a third of 1968’s record volume of 1,155,000, and importation in later years has never exceeded one third of the 1968 total. It is also significant that the post-1968 totals are far lower than in 1967 and 1966, years when the number of handguns imported was not affected by the deadline imposed by the Gun Control Act. These figures show a linear growth in handgun imports being replaced in 1969 by a new plateau at about one third of the 1968 rate, a further dip in 1970, and a leveling off in later years at around 300,000 units.
The figures in Table 3 are from annual reports from the Bureau of the Census on specific categories of foreign trade. The data are derived from customs records and are the only estimates of imports available for the years prior to 1969. Since December of 1968, however, A.T.F. has been compiling its own figures on firearms importation, derived from forms filed by holders of import licenses. A.T.F. statistics on handgun imports tell a somewhat different story, as shown in Table 4.
The A.T.F. and Census figures are in general agreement for the years 1969-1971, showing a sustained drop in handgun imports. The A.T.F. statistics for these years are always somewhat higher than the Census figures, because the A.T.F. definition of a handgun includes certain handgun parts and marginal weapons that the Census figures exclude. For 1972, however, the A.T.F. and Census imports diverge by 150,000 guns, and the 1973 totals of 300,000 and 900,000 respectively cannot be reconciled.[171] If the A.T.F. [Page 168]

TABLE 4HANDGUN IMPORTS BY YEAR, 1964-73
		Bureau of the Census		A.T.F.
	1964	253,000		¾
	1965	346,906		¾
	1966	513,019		¾
	1967	747,013		¾
	1968	1,155,368		¾
	1969	349,252		358,083a
	1970	226,516		279,537
	1971	345,557		357,170
	1972	293,343		439,883
	1973	309,471		900,680
a Estimate based on a thirteen-month total of 387,924.Source: U.S. Dep't of Treasury, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Statistics Division.

figures are closer to the truth, the pattern of handgun imports shows a sustained drop followed by a sharp increase in 1972 and 1973, with the 1973 total approaching the 1968 peak. With no definitive basis for choosing between these sharply different estimates, each of which claims to be based on compilations from individual records of handgun transactions, we will simply have to plead in the alternative whenever handgun import statistics for these years are needed to assess the impact of the Act. One could hope, however, that the two federal agencies in charge of compiling these data might attempt to resolve such a glaring discrepancy.
Unless imported handguns are a distinctive social control problem, the appropriate way to measure the impact of the ban on imports is the number and type of handguns, both domestic and imported, coming to the civilian United States market. In order to acquire these data, it is necessary to study patterns of domestic handgun production. One would predict that a partial ban on imports would lead domestic manufacturers to produce more weapons. This prediction is supported by the statistics compiled in Table 5.
Table 6 shows the estimated total number of handguns introduced into the civilian market during 1963 through 1973; the disagreement on imports makes it necessary to, present both "low" (using Census statistics) and "high" (using A.T.F. statistics) estimates for 1969-1973.
Annual handgun production and imports in the first three years after passage of the Act were off more than 25 per cent from the 1968 peak-year total¾and approximately the same as in 1967. After that the "high" and "low" total estimates tell different stories. If the "low" estimate is accurate, an expansion in domestic production in 1972 and 1973 pushed the total number of handguns to nearly the two million mark, a unit volume 400,000 below the 1968 total. If the "high" estimate is accurate, increases in both [Page 169]

TABLE 5 ESTIMATED DOMESTIC PRODUCTION OF HANDGUNS FOR CIVILIAN USE BY YEAR, 1964-73
	1964	491,073a	1969	1,367,300c
	1965	666,394a	1970	1,393,690d
	1966	699,798a	1971	1,420,692e
	1967	926,404a	1972	1,667,000f
	1968	1,259,356b	1973	1,609,000g
a	Estimate based on production reported by manufacturers to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. See George D. Newton & Franklin E. Zimring, Firearms and Violence in American Life 172 (1963).
b	Estimate projected from production for the first six months of 1968. Ibid.
c	Estimate based on handgun excise tax collections of $6,183,000 for fiscal 1969, and $6,697,000 for fiscal 1970, and ratios of $4.34 excise tax collection per handgun in fiscal 1971. The mean ratio of excise tax collection to guns ($4.71) was divided into the mean of excise tax collections for fiscal 1969 and fiscal 1970 ($6,440,000) to derive an estimated calendar-year production of 1,367,304 handguns. Fiscal-year estimates of handgun production for 1968 and 1971 were derived from the mean of production for the two calendar years that were pertinent. Our estimate of production deviated from that of the Treasury (which simply divided total production for 1967, 1968, 1970 and 1971 by four) by a total of 112,000 handguns, or nine per cent.
d	Estimate based on A.T.F. survey of domestic manufacturers.
e	Estimate based on A.T.F. survey of "confidential industry sources."
f	Estimate based on A.T.F. survey for first six months, quarterly reports to A.T.F. for July-December. Handgun exports deleted.
g	Estimate based on quarterly report by manufacturers to A.T.F.

production and imports pushed unit volume above two million in 1972 and above the 1968 peak in 1973.
While the peak rate of 1968 may not be an ideal candidate for a base year, the figures in Table 6 suggest that the new import restrictions did have an immediate and substantial impact on the number of handguns that came into the civilian market; as might have been expected, however, domestic production expanded after the Act, and the increase in domestic capacity was equal by 1973 to about half the 1,100,000 handguns that were imported in 1968.

TABLE 6 HANDGUN PRODUCTION AND IMPORTS BY YEAR, U.S., 1964-73 (in thousands)
		Low Estimate		High Estimate
	1964	744		¾
	1965	1002		¾
	1966	1213		¾
	1967	1673		¾
	1968	2414		¾
	1969	1716		1725
	1970	1619		1672
	1971	1765		1777
	1972	1960		2100
	1973	1918		2510

[Page 170]
In part, the expanded domestic output reflected the production of domestic "Saturday Night Specials." The importation of handgun parts for United States assembly grew from a unit volume of 18,000 in 1968 to more than a million in 1972.[172] The average value of a United States handgun (as indicated by, the ratio of production to excise tax collections) fell by about 10 per cent between 1969 and 1972, during a period of general inflation.[173] Yet the impact of the importation restrictions was substantial in the years immediately following the Act and could have been even more substantial if a tighter definition of "sporting purposes" and restrictions on the importation of handgun parts had materialized.
There are two ways of measuring the impact of restricted supplies of handguns on the rate of handgun violence. The first is to compare the rate of civilian handgun acquisition with rates of handgun violence; the second is to trend the proportion of violent activities attributable to handguns over time. The first method is the most frequently used, but fails to control for the many variables other than gun availability that may influence the rate at which crimes are committed with all weapons, including guns. The second method seeks to control for other factors influencing crime rates by focusing on relative rather than absolute measures of gun use. Both approaches show the same general pattern for the period 1966 through 1973¾explosive growth in the rate of handgun usage in the period 1966-1969 followed by three years in which handgun violence continued to grow, but at a more modest rate.
Figure 1 shows trends in handgun homicide and nonfatal assault by firearms in the 57 largest United States cities. The assault figures, which are not broken down by type of firearm, should be composed of about 80 per cent handgun attacks, since 79 per cent of all firearms homicides during the period were committed with handguns in these cities.
Handgun homicides and gun assaults increase consistently throughout the period, but the rate of increase slows considerably after 1969. Assuming about a one-year lead time for guns produced or imported to reach city streets, the moderating rate of increase coincides with the reduction in new handguns entering the civilian market.
Figure 2 shows handgun homicides and firearm assaults as a percentage of all homicides and assaults, for the same cities.
Figure 2 reveals substantial increases in the percentage of homicides attributed to handguns and assaults attributed to firearms; these moderated beginning in 1969, but continued to trend upward. If, as seems likely, these percentages are related to the rate at which handguns enter the civilian [Page 171]

FIGURE 1
TRENDS IN HANDGUN HOMICIDES AND FIREARMS ASSAULTS, 57 CITIES WITH POPULATION 250,000 OR MORE, BY YEAR 1966-1973

market, both handgun attacks and the percentage of all attacks attributable to handguns should show further upward movement in 1974, particularly if the A.T.F. estimate of imports (the high estimate in Table 6) is the more accurate.
In part because of the import restrictions and their aftermath, the "Saturday Night Special" issue became the focal point for firearms-control debate in the early 1970s. Using the uneasy conceptual framework of section 925(d)(3) as a starting point, proposals to extend production controls to domestic handguns proceeded in three different directions. One set of proposals, never widely supported in Congress, used the artificiality of the distinction between "Saturday Night Specials" and other handguns as a platform for urging prohibition of handgun production and sale for the civilian market.[174] A second approach [Page 172]

FIGURE 2
HANDGUN HOMICIDE AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL HOMICIDE, AND FIREARM ASSAULT AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL ASSAULT, BY YEAR IN 57 U.S. CITIES OVER 250,000

was Senator Bayh’s proposal to extend the existing A.T.F. minimum standards of length and quality to domestically produced handguns; his bill, S. 2507, would have prevented the sale of many handguns produced by established United States firms that were smaller than the minimum standards in the bill.[175] The Bayh bill passed the Senate in 1972 but never came to the floor of the House.[176]
A third approach, which enjoyed considerable support in the Congress and the Administration, sought to amend the "Factoring Criteria for Weapons" into a test of handgun reliability and to extend this type of regulation to both imported and domestic handguns. Federally funded tests of handguns were performed by the H. B. White Laboratories in 1972, and there was talk of an Administration proposal to amend section 92 5 (d), but no such proposal [Page 173] was introduced.[177] A number of proposals have been introduced in Congress and state legislatures using criteria such as melting point or reliability test survival as criteria for minimum handgun quality.[178]
Most of the descendants of section 925(d) suffer from the same aroma of arbitrariness that surrounded the debate in 1968 and the standards promulgated under the 1968 act. The Bayh bill used the previously discussed "factoring criteria" developed to test foreign handguns.[179] The bin seems to have been inspired by reports of domestically produced "Saturday Night Specials," and the criteria and cutoff points were borrowed from the A.T.F. import standards to avoid the tricky problem of establishing and defending independent standards. The various proposals to make handguns "reliable" oddly did not include shotguns and rifles, as one would assume a genuine consumer-safety proposal for firearms should. The special problems associated with handgun possession and use have achieved a great deal of public attention, but the second generation "Saturday Night Special" bills do not address what appears to be the central problem: the misuse of handguns, rather than of any recognizable subclass of handguns.
One lesson of the 1968 import restrictions is that a production standard need not be conceptually acceptable to have impact on the United States handgun market. Any standards that disrupt handgun, production can have short-run effects, and any standards that raise prices significantly or restrict production capacity can have some long-range impact on handgun sales and use. The problem with this type of partial solution is not merely that it has "loopholes" through which compensating increases in production can flow: it also lacks coherent principle. The mechanism used by section 925(d)(3)¾shutting off the flow of a particular type of weapon¾might work with a relatively high degree of effectiveness if only we could determine what it is that we really want to prohibit.
The fluctuation in handgun violence over the past eight years also suggests, for good or ill, that the rate at which new handguns enter the market has a special impact on handgun violence. The 2.4 million new handguns entering the market in 1968 were a less than 15 per cent addition to the total domestic supply, yet were associated with a fax larger increase in handgun homicides.[180] In part this "leverage" may simply reflect the fact that the same forces that influence crime rates increase the demand for handguns, in which case a legislated reduction in handgun production and imports will not necessarily result in a disproportionate reduction in handgun violence. [Page 174]

FIGURE 3
HANDGUNS CONFISCATED IN NEW YORK CITY DURING DECEMBER 1973 BY YEAR OF ORIGINAL SALE

It is also true, however, that a large percentage of the handguns used in big-city crime are new or near-new, as seen in Figure 3.
As Figure 3 shows, 19 per cent of the handguns confiscated by New York City police in December 1973 and later traced by A.T.F. had been shipped to dealers that same year. The next highest total was the 14 per cent of all guns produced in 1972, and the pattern shows a steady decline in percentage for prior years not accounted for by the fluctuations in handgun production or imports.[181] If newer handguns are more "at risk" than older handguns, the number of such guns shipped in any year would be expected to have a more-than-proportional impact, up or down, on trends in gun violence.
To the extent that restricting imports reduced the rate of handgun acquisition, it may share some of the credit for moderating the upward trend in handgun violence that preceded the Gun Control Act of 1968. But there is not much credit to pass around, because the volume of handguns coming to the civilian market has increased almost to, or beyond, the 1968 peak, and the same theory that would attribute some prevention of handgun violence to the 1968 restrictions would predict further increases in handgun violence. [Page 175]

C. State Aid and Migratory Handguns

A major aim of the Gun Control Act was to assist state and local gun control efforts by reducing the flow of guns from loose-control to tight-control jurisdictions. Prior to the Act, two northeastern states and a number of municipalities had attempted to restrict handgun possession to only those of their citizens who could demonstrate a special need to own one.[182] Such laws were intended to reduce handgun ownership to a tiny fraction of the national average of 40 handguns per 100 households. As it turned out, though, municipal efforts to restrict handgun possession were vulnerable to the flow of handguns from within the state and from other states, and state efforts were vulnerable to interstate traffic.[183]
Whether state and local restrictive handgun licensing reduced rates of criminal violence was widely debated. States and cities with such licensing systems experienced lower rates of criminal homicide than some other jurisdictions, and guns were used in a lower percentage of all violent crime.[184] But the two major laboratories of restrictive handgun licensing, New York and Massachusetts, were located in regions with traditionally low rates of handgun ownership and were demographically different from the areas to which they were compared by advocates of handgun restrictions.[185]
It was not contested that a major problem in administering any gun licensing system was the interstate "leakage" of guns. In the mid-1960s it was estimated that 87 per cent of all firearms used in Massachusetts crime had been purchased first in other states.[186] Two thirds of a sample of handguns confiscated in New York City had come from other states, and surveys in other cities with licensing systems told roughly the same story.[187]
This part of the article addresses the impact of the Gun Control Act on the interstate flow of handguns. Data are presented on handgun crime in New York and Boston, two cities in which a reduction of interstate handgun traffic should result in lower rates of handgun use. A sample of handguns confiscated in New York City is then analyzed to determine where handguns are coming from after the Act, and, to the extent possible, how they are coming. A separate analysis is presented of trends in gun and nongun crime in Washington, D.C., a restrictive licensing jurisdiction where special enforcement efforts were initiated by A.T.F. in 1970.[Page 176]

1. Measuring Interstate Gun Traffic: New York and Boston. If the Gun Control Act and its enforcement has led to a reduction of interstate firearms traffic, this reduction should be evident in New York City and Boston, the principal cities in the two most restrictive handgun licensing states in the United States, because out-of-state handguns are a higher proportion of total handguns in these cities than in other metropolitan areas.
One index of the relative number of handguns in circulation is the number of violent crimes committed with handguns. Figure 4 shows the number of handgun homicides reported by the police in New York and Boston and handgun homicide trends for the 57-city sample analyzed in Figure 1. Figure 5 reports parallel data for firearms assaults-the best available measure of trends in handgun assaults.
The pattern in New York is clear: handgun homicides and firearm assaults grew steadily through the period 1966-1972. In the period 1969-1972 both homicide by handgun (up to 87 per cent) and firearm assaults (up to 70 percent) increased three times as much as the 57-city averages (28 per cent for handgun homicide and 24 per cent for firearm assaults). Even these inflated growth rates are somewhat smaller than increases experienced during 1966-1969, so it is possible that some reduction in interstate handgun traffic is concealed in the compound growth of handgun violence in New York City.
The statistics from Boston show a less steady pattern, in part because the number of crimes reported there are Only 5-10 per cent of the New York City totals. During 1969-1971, handgun homicides and firearm assaults increased more than the 57-city average. There was a dip in 1972, followed by a large increase in 1973.
One needs a basis for comparison to determine whether the New York and Boston data permit an inference that the Gun Control Act is reducing interstate handgun traffic. One natural point of comparison is the pattern of handgun violence in each city before the Act. By this measure, both cities show increases in handgun violence, with a rate of increase almost as great in the years after the Act as in the years before. Another basis of comparison, used in Figures 4 and 5, is the rate at which handgun violence was growing in other United States cities. By this index, both cities show increases more pronounced than the national urban pattern during 1969-1973. The pattern for all other United States cities may not, however, be the appropriate basis for comparison, inasmuch as both Boston and New York have traditionally had lower rates of handgun violence than other urban areas, and the very different baselines make trend comparisons misleading.
Another method of attempting to compare New York and Boston patterns would be to find cities similar to them in respects other than firearm policy. The only faintly reasonable match for New York City is Philadelphia, which has a municipal handgun policy, dose to New York’s but a more permissive state law. And there is no adequate comparison city for Boston. [Page 177]

FIGURE 4
TRENDS IN HANDGUN HOMICIDES BY YEAR, NEW YORK CITY, BOSTON, AND 57-CITY AVERAGE

The New York-Philadelphia comparison is set out in Figures 6 and 7.
Between 1966 and 1969, New York experienced a larger increase in handgun homicide than Philadelphia (151 per cent versus 79 per cent) and a smaller relative increase in firearm assault (76 per cent versus 102 per cent). Between 1969 and 1972, the New York and Philadelphia patterns of increase are quite similar: handgun homicide increased 87 per cent in New York, compared to 81 per cent in Philadelphia; firearm assault increased 70 per cent in New York, compared to 80 per cent in Philadelphia. The similar trends suggest that the northeastern cities with traditionally lower rates of [Page 178]

FIGURE 5
TRENDS IN FIREARM ASSAULTS BY YEAR, NEW YORK CITY, BOSTON, AND 57-CITY AVERAGE

handgun ownership and use were more vulnerable to large percentage jumps in gun violence during the past few years. The similar post-Act patterns in New York and Philadelphia cannot be read as evidence that interstate handgun traffic (more important in New York violence)[188] varied more significantly than other gun traffic, unless one supposes that the higher pre-Act increases in New York City handgun homicide indicate that the New York post-Act totals would have been higher still in the absence of legislation,
A further way to control for factors other than handgun supply that condition rates of violence is to compare trends in gun versus nongun crime in the cities being studied. Factors other than gun supply are assumed to affect both types of crime in a similar manner. Increased or decreased handgun [Page 179]

FIGURE 6
TRENDS IN HANDGUN HOMICIDES BY YEAR, NEW YORK CITY AND PHILADELPHIA

traffic is assumed to influence gun crime only. The percentage of crimes involving guns is a shorthand expression of trends in gun crime controlled for variations in nongun crime.
Figures 8 and 9 trend the use of handguns in homicide (Figure 8) and assault (Figure 9) for New York, Boston, and Philadelphia.
All of the individual cities in Figures 8 and 9 begin with a smaller share of homicides and assaults committed with handguns than the national urban average. Both the rate of handgun violence and the proportion of violence attributable to handguns increased more dramatically in all three cities than the national urban average. And finally while the rate of increase in the per- [Page 180]

FIGURE 7
TRENDS IN FIREARMS ASSAULTS, BY YEAR, NEW YORK CITY AND PHILADELPHIA

centage of homicides committed by handguns slows a bit in New York, the data do not support an inference that the upward trend in handgun use stabilized after the Act.
If the "new guns" hypothesis advanced earlier[189]¾that the rate at which handguns are introduced into an area is disproportionately reflected in rates of handgun violence¾is correct, the data suggest that the Gun Control Act of 1968 did not result in a palpable disruption of interstate handgun traffic.
An A.T.F. analysis of handguns confiscated by the New York City police provides support for this conclusion, as well as a partial explanation of why [Page 181]

FIGURE 8
HANDGUN HOMICIDE AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL HOMICIDE BY YEAR,
NEW YORK CITY, PHILADELPHIA, AND BOSTON

the Act itself had no major depressant impact on interstate handgun migration. In 1973 A.T.F. traced a sample of handguns used in crime in Atlanta, New York, Detroit, and New Orleans. Table 7 shows where the handguns confiscated in New York were originally sold by dealers.

TABLE 7PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION OF NEW YORK HANDGUNS BY STATE OF ORIGINAL SALE
		South Carolina	24	%
		Florida	13
		Georgia	11
		Virginia	8
		New York	5
		All Others	39
			100	%	(2048)
Source: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Project I (1974), at 8.

[Page 182]

FIGURE 9
FIREARM ASSAULT AS A PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL ASSAULT,
NEW YORK CITY, PHILADELPHIA, AND BOSTON

Only five per cent of the handguns traced to retail transactions were originally sold in the State of New York. Over half of all the handguns traced came from dealers in four southeastern states with high handgun populations and few controls on handgun sales. Thirty-nine per cent of the guns came from the other 45 states. The concentration of handgun traffic in a few noncontiguous states and the fact that most handguns are sold at retail in these states suggest that traffic in handguns is organized and that retail dealers are, with or without their knowledge, the prime source of supply.
Table 8 shows the distribution of a sample of New York City handguns by year of original retail sale.
More than half of the guns traced were sold at retail in the five years after the effective date of the Gun Control Act.
The A.T.F. studies have not yet traced guns in other restrictive licensing cities or attempted to show how handguns migrate from southeastern dealers [Page 183]

TABLE 8HANDGUNS CONFISCATED IN NEW YORK CITY DURING DECEMBER OF 1973 BY YEAR OF ORIGINAL SALE
	Pre-1945		14	%
	1946-60		8
	1961-65		7
	1966-68		15
		Total Pre-Act .........................................			44%
	1969		6
	1970		8
	1971		11
	1972		14
	1973		19
		Total Post-Act ........................................			56a
					100%	(1336)
a Year totals add to 58% because of rounding.Source: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

to northeastern city streets in typical cases. One series of A.T.F. criminal investigations involving South Carolina dealers suggested that large-scale dealer transfers¾involving more than 1000 handguns during the period of investigation¾are an important source of New York City street weapons.[190] In almost all of these large-scale transactions the federally licensed dealer is a culpable party. In most of the large transactions the handguns were sold to South Carolina or North Carolina residents and apparently shipped in bulk for street sales in northern cities.[191] Smaller-scale transactions¾from 10 to 100 handguns¾involve New York City residents coming south to purchase handguns for a return trip, and southerners buying guns for personal transport north, by means as mundane as Greyhound bus.[192]
If the pattern reflected in these selected cases holds true for most New York City handguns, the major mechanism for interstate transportation of handguns is the large transaction, requiring dealer participation, financing and a distribution network in urban markets. There is danger, however, in drawing this inference from so small a sample of cases subjected to criminal investigation. A.T.F. criminal enforcement efforts are, rightly, concentrated on high-volume cases. With very scarce resources and a huge gun commerce to investigate, the sample of cases dealt with could be profoundly biased, and a large number of smaller transactions could account for a majority of interstate handgun traffic. The only way to determine the nature of interstate traffic is the detailed tracing of representative samples of urban handguns. [Page 184]
Yet the data already presented on gun crime and gun traffic do permit a preliminary interpretation of the impact of the Act on interstate handgun traffic. The rate of handgun crime and the proportion of attacks involving handguns have continued to increase in tight-control cities without significant interruption. The handguns are relatively new and come from a cluster of loose-control states. It appears that handguns are coming from the same places by the same means as before the Act. Otherwise one would expect to see a dip, followed by a recovery, in the rate at which handguns entered urban areas.
In this connection it is important to recall that the Gun Control Act requires records covering only the transfer from dealer to first customer. While it can be argued that any customer who buys thirty handguns is presumably himself a dealer, federal law does not require the dealer to notify A.T.F. of this type of transaction. If the multiple handgun buyer uses his own name, he is in jeopardy if an audit of dealer records happens to focus attention on his purchase; if the customer uses an intermediary who cannot identify him, or gives false identification, the trail of federal records immediately grows cold. The interstate transportation of guns for resale in violation of local law is a crime under the 1968 Act, as it was under the 1938 Act. But finding the offender requires a heavy investment of manpower¾to audit firearm transaction records and to discover and arrest illegal sellers, principally through undercover work.
As previously noted, the manpower available for enforcing the Act has always been modest, and it is not possible to determine the proportion of A.T.F. effort devoted to suppressing interstate handgun traffic. There are thus at least two plausible explanations for the apparent failure of the Act to significantly diminish handgun migration: lack of enforcement effort and the inherent difficulty of erecting barriers between states with unlimited handgun access and those that seek to restrict handgun availability. To the extent that further manpower can produce some restraint on the interstate traffic in handguns, the state-aid approach of the Gun Control Act is not inherently unsound; to the extent that loose-control states and federally financed highways make state efforts at gun control depend on the control efforts of other states, the 1968 Act can never be expected to achieve its purpose.

2. Operation D.C. One method of testing the relative impact of enforcement effort is to invest a larger-than-usual amount of resources in a single jurisdiction and to determine the consequences of this investment on rates of handgun crime. One such experiment has been conducted by A.T.F. in a city that attempts restrictive handgun licensing and has suffered from the migration of handguns from other states. Called "Operation Disarm the Criminal," this experiment was conducted in the District of Columbia during the first six months of 1970. The District is an admirable candidate for test- [Page 185] ing efforts to restrict interstate handgun flow because it is a tight-handgun-control jurisdiction, bordering on two states with more lenient handgun policies. In January 1970 the A.T.F. enforcement staff in the District was increased from about seven special agents to between 35 and 50 special agents.[193] This abnormally high manpower allocation was maintained for only six months and fell back to about 20 when the Internal Revenue Service declined to provide funds for a one-year extension of the project. The enforcement effort, at a ratio of one agent to about 2000 population, was about ten times greater than A.T.F. manpower in other major cities.[194]
The special agents assigned to Operation D.C. contacted dealers in the District and proximate areas in Maryland and Virginia that were the major source of handgun supply to Washington. But the principal occupation of these agents was "street work"¾undercover investigations, efforts to purchase guns from illegal sellers, and attempts to perfect federal gun law charges against persons whom the local police nominated as being particularly troublesome.
Any attempt to measure the consequences of this effort runs into a number of obstacles. Operation D.C. was identified as a candidate for study long after its conclusion, and the historical records are incomplete. The experiment lasted only six months, which means that any impact on handgun migration attributable to the effort would probably be short-lived. And because the best measures of trends in gun migration are crime statistics, short-term changes in the flow of handguns might not result in discernible differences. Further, this was one of many simultaneous crime-control efforts occurring in the District, and care must be taken to avoid crediting the operation with results that justly should be attributed to other variables. Also, the rate of handgun violence had increased rapidly prior to 1970, and there is danger that regression from abnormally high prior levels of handgun violence might be misread as evidence of enforcement impact.
There are a number of ways in which the special enforcement efforts of Operation D.C. might have reduced the migration of handguns into the District of Columbia and the supply of such weapons available in the District. First, enforcement activities result in the confiscation of weapons, which are thereafter unavailable for sale or criminal use. Project records indicate that just over 575 weapons were confiscated or purchased during the six months the operation was near full strength, an average of about 30 guns per agent [Page 186] man-year, and a total too small to generate hope that this process alone had a measurable impact on rate of gun violence. However, the operation also involved efforts to persuade gun dealers in nearby out-of-state counties to monitor their customers more carefully.[195] While data on handgun sales by these dealers are not available, it is possible that the influx of weapons into the District was substantially reduced. The enforcement effort might also have disrupted the sale of weapons within the District by deterring or apprehending illegal firearms sellers. The project reported a total of 159 criminal cases initiated but did not estimate how many of the subjects apprehended were involved in large-scale commerce in weapons.[196]
The most straightforward method of testing the manifold effects of special firearms enforcement efforts is to examine trends in gun crime within the District, on the assumption that a substantial reduction in the number of handguns entering the District would result in a lower number of gun crimes than would otherwise be expected, Figure 10 shows trends in handgun and all other homicide in the District of Columbia by year for the period 1966-1973.

FIGURE 10
GUN AND NONGUN HOMICIDES BY YEAR, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1966-1971

[Page 187]
As Figure 10 shows, both gun and nongun homicide declined in 1970, but the rate of gun killings did not decline disproportionately. With the cooperation of the Washington D.C. police, we obtained a monthly breakdown of gun and nongun homicides from 1966 through December 1971.[197] These supplementary data were acquired because the intensive enforcement was of short duration, and monthly data would allow the use of interrupted time-series analysis. Figure 11 shows the monthly patterns of gun and nongun homicide.

FIGURE 11
GUN AND NONGUN HOMICIDE BY MONTH, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1966-1971

What appears visually is a drop in gun homicides in the middle months of 1970 that is not present in the nongun pattern. The interrupted time-series analysis indicates that gun killings decreased substantially during the enforcement effort while nongun killings did not. The time series of nongun killings reveals no significant change in the rate or trend in homicides.[198] Gun homicides, using February 1970 as the first month in which an effect would be [Page 188]

FIGURE 12
NONGUN HOMICIDES BY MONTH, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1966-1971

expected, decline in subsequent months.[199] While the program used for the analysis is not well suited to studying the impact of enforcement efforts, the results in this case suggest some short-term enforcement effect and this suggestion is confirmed by use of a second program more suited to studying enforcement effect.[200]
The data on aggravated assault tell a different story. Monthly assault data were not available covering months prior to 1969. Figure 14 provides yearly data on Washington assaults since 1966, and Figure 15 gives quarterly data for assaults from 1969 through 1973.
Gun assaults do not decline, while nongun assaults fluctuate in a pattern [Page 189]

FIGURE 13
GUN HOMICIDES BY MONTH, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1966-1971

FIGURE 14
GUN AND NONGUN ASSAULTS BY YEAR, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1966-1973

[Page 190]

FIGURE 15
GUN AND NONGUN ASSAULTS BY QUARTER, WASHINGTON, D.C., 1969-1972

unrelated to enforcement. On a yearly basis the flat 1970 performance appears encouraging, since gun assaults had been, increasing steadily prior to 1970. However, with insufficient data to perform a time-series analysis and with no dip in the level of gun assaults similar to the mid-1970 dip in gun killings, the assault data do not support the hypothesis that Operation D.C. substantially affected the migration of handguns into the District of Columbia.
Taken as a whole, the data on Operation D.C. suggest that special enforcement efforts might produce measurable impact on gun crime. But the undramatic data on assaults and the brevity of the experiment leave uncomfortably ample room for debate on whether such an exercise-can produce results worth its costs. [Page 191]
In sum, on the available data, the Gun Control Act has not produced any measurable change in the migration of handguns from loose-control to tight-control jurisdictions. It appears that the interstate movement of handguns into tight-control areas was not interrupted by the Act because the 1968 scheme of records and regulation did not inhibit large-scale purchases from dealers in loose-control jurisdictions for interstate transportation to northeastern city streets. A.T.F.’s single experiment with concentrated enforcement produced suggestive but not conclusive evidence of impact. It is unknown to what extent the difficulty of the task as opposed to the absence of sufficient manpower is the explanation for the lack of measurable impact of the Act on interstate handgun migration.
It is also difficult to speak with confidence of the inherent difficulties of the Act’s state-aid approach because many remediable difficulties have hampered the enforcement of the "state-aid" sections of the Act. Thus far, A.T.F. has been operating with (1) an insufficient information base for allocating enforcement resources, (2) lack of coordination between regulatory and criminal enforcement efforts, (3) regulations that fall far short of the power delegated by the Act to suppress interstate handgun migration, and (4) a manpower-allocation policy that spreads a thin coat of inadequate resources nationwide. Each of these problems deserves further elaboration.
Although some progress has been made during the past year, A.T.F. still lacks much of the information it needs to plan enforcement policy, and allocate criminal enforcement resources, rationally. Before mid-1972 the Bureau did not require any information from manufacturers on the number of guns they produced. At present, this information is collected on a quarterly basis, but no data are available on the number of firearms sold in specific regions, either at retail or wholesale, and there is no way that regulatory manpower can be allocated according to variations in patterns of firearm traffic. Lack of basic data has also hampered criminal enforcement efforts. High or disproportionate volume of handgun sales in a particular state is a dear indication that, the state is a launching pad for interstate handguns. Data on handgun sales could also prove useful in monitoring changes in points of origin for guns transported in violation of the Act. Criminal enforcement efforts have also been hampered by lack of information on who is transporting handguns in violation of the Act and how the guns get from loose-control to tight-control states. Project "I" is the Bureau’s first venture toward gathering these necessary data, but that operation has not yet traced a representative sample of handguns confiscated in tight-control cities beyond the point of first retail sale.[201] [Page 192]
Related to insufficient data is the apparent lack of coordination between the regulatory and criminal enforcement segments of administration of the Act. Even though much of the regulatory work required under the Act has been performed by Special Agents with arrest powers, there has not been sufficient use of regulatory powers to facilitate criminal enforcement ends. Millions of forms giving details of gun transactions lie fallow in dealer record books. The decentralized nature of these records and limited manpower make a complete audit of these transfer records impossible. Yet a careful sampling of regulatory enforcement records can show what types of transactions, customers, and locations are most closely associated with criminal violations of the Act.
An example of the use of regulatory data to set both regulatory and criminal enforcement priorities comes from an analysis we conducted of 100 dealer-compliance investigations in the Chicago district office of A.T.F. As part of the compliance investigation, records of individual transactions were selected by the inspector and verified as to the purchaser’s address and criminal record. Some transactions are chosen by the inspector at random, some are chosen because the purchaser’s address appeared to be in a high-crime area, and some because more than one gun was purchased. A number of analyses can be performed with this sample of purchase records. Table 9 shows the percentage of apparent violations of the Act found in the audit.
More than half of all multiple firearm purchases involving handguns appeared to violate the Act, compared with a one-per cent estimated violation rate of transactions selected at random. From all appearances, regulatory audits should concentrate on multiple handgun transactions, and the criminal enforcement branch has a special stake in acquiring information on the number and pattern of such transactions.
This is only one example of how coordinated sampling of firearms trans-

TABLE 9RATES OF APPARENT LAW VIOLATION
		Reason for Verification
		At Random	High-Crime Area	Multiple Weapons	Total
Firearm(s) Purchased
	Handguns	2%	7%	58%	10%a (N = 370)
	All Others	0	2%	0	1%a (N = 141)
		1%	7%	50%
		(N = 184)	(N = 287)	(N = 24)	551
a Includes 15 cases that could not be classified.Source: U.S. Treasury Dep't, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Records.

[Page 193]
actions can aid in isolating enforcement priorities and in producing data on the extent to which the law is being observed. The regulatory branch could also follow up on transactions in a sample of cases to see how many guns in particular areas are no longer traceable to a local owner after one year. The criminal enforcement unit could trace confiscated big-city handguns from first purchasers as far forward in the chain of commerce as is possible. This would provide information on how interstate movement occurs and suggest ways in which the record-keeping and information systems presently used might be altered to depress the present rate of interstate handgun migration.
It is true that the decentralized nature of transaction information makes the gathering of intelligence both difficult and expensive. But much of the problem could be solved by new regulations within the powers granted under the Act. Requiring dealers to keep records of sales by type of gun is a normal and far from onerous duty of a federally licensed business. Requiring dealers to notify A.T.F. of multiple retail handgun sales is justified, either because of the high risk that the recipient is acting as an unlicensed dealer or because such guns are more frequently shipped out of state in violation of the Act.[202] A requirement that dealers verify local residence beyond inspecting identification documents would be a harder issue under the Act but could be defended on a variety of grounds.
To criticize A.T.F. for spreading its manpower too thinly is something of a shot in the dark, if only because the Bureau does not have the information on which such a judgment can be based. It is known that "state aid" was a high priority of the 1968 Act, and it is likely that far fewer than 30 per cent of all prosecutions under the Act concern interstate shipment of handguns and long guns. The total agent staff in New York City was estimated at 63 last year, which appears low in relation to New York City’s dominant role as a receiver of interstate handguns. But without knowing where guns are sold, how they come to tight-control states, and how effective various strategies are in reducing interstate flow, it is difficult to criticize a pattern of manpower allocation; it is equally difficult to formulate a rational allocation without such data.
With respect to the state-aid alms of the Gun Control Act, it is not possible to determine whether interstate migration of guns continues because the approach of the Act is hopeless or whether lack of strategic intelligence and enforcement manpower are a major source of the difficulty. There is every indication that we had better find out soon. Political support for a more extensive federal role in firearms regulation is difficult to measure or predict. [Page 194]
But changes in federal law, if they occur, will either take the form of attempts to strengthen the present state-aid system or will scrap the approach in favor of a national control system, either licensing owners or limiting production. It would thus seem appropriate to test the preventive potential of intensive enforcement of the ban on migratory weapons.
At the same time, a nationwide expansion of enforcement large enough to test the impact of manpower would be expensive and impractical in the near future. A.T.F. has a limited number of special agents and the lead time necessary to train more agents is substantial. Further, the type of federal police work necessary for the detection of black-market firearms sales has a high component of "street work"¾and a large expansion of this element of the Bureau’s work raises the specter of a national police force. More likely, any attempt to spread an increase in enforcement power over too wide an area would result in insignificant increases in the Bureau’s ability to enforce the law.
The appropriate next step is a sustained effort to increase enforcement in one or two major tight-control jurisdictions. Depending on available resources and police cooperation, Washington, Boston, or New York would seem to be admirable candidates for such a study. The data from the New York handgun analysis by Project I would implicate South Carolina, North Carolina, and Florida as sending areas worthy of special enforcement and regulatory efforts. A fair test would involve a tripling of enforcement and regulatory manpower over at least a two-year period.
These comments are based in the premise that the state-aid sections of the Gun Control Act were intended as a mechanism to reduce the flow of firearms into states and cities attempting to restrict gun ownership. It is, of course, possible that Congress did not place a high priority on that aim but adopted state aid as an ideological compromise. If so, the compromise may have worked admirably without any sign of reductions in firearms violence and the administration of the Act by A.T.F. has been, if anything, too energetic.