Dixon pleads for gun-trace data

The Baltimore Sun

WASHINGTON -- Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon joined the mayors of New York, Washington and other cities yesterday in urging Congress to make federal gun-trace data more readily available to local police departments.

"Our cities our bleeding," Dixon said during her visit to Capitol Hill. "Having this kind of data is imperative."

The mayors are targeting restrictions on the information that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives may share with other law enforcement agencies. The controls, written into the spending bill that funds the Justice Department, are up for debate this week by the House Appropriations Committee.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns, founded last year by New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, has made removing the controls their top legislative priority in the newly Democratic Congress. But while the group has found allies in Washington, it is also running into resistance.

Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski took the restrictions out of the Senate version of the bill, only to see them restored by the Senate Appropriations Committee. A spokeswoman for Mikulski said the Maryland Democrat would continue to support efforts to remove the controls as the debate moves to the full Senate.

At the other end of the Capitol, opponents of the restrictions said yesterday that they remained one vote shy of the majority needed to strike them from the version in the House Appropriations Committee. Whichever way that panel votes, that debate, too, is likely to spill out into the full House.

The National Rifle Association, the National Fraternal Order of Police and the Bush administration favor retaining the controls. They say that making the information more widely available could compromise investigations and endanger undercover officers.

"We're on the side of rank-and-file law enforcement," NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said yesterday. "On one side, you have NRA and rank-and-file police officers. On the other side, you have Mayor Bloomberg and other politicians and political appointees."

The NRA has urged members to contact their representatives about keeping the restrictions in place.

"We've had a number of positive developments, and we're grateful for that," Arulanandam said. "But there's still much work ahead."

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives maintains trace data on guns found at crime scenes. When local police recover a weapon, they can ask the bureau's National Trace Center to help determine when, where and by whom it was purchased. But the ATF will not pass along information on related firearms -- those sold by the same dealer, for example, or those purchased by the same individual.

"This is the post-9/11 world," Bloomberg said yesterday. "We all said, 'Connect the dots.' We all want law enforcement to share information."

Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, joined Dixon, Bloomberg, Menino and Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty at a news conference yesterday.

"I understand firsthand the value of gun-trace data," said Ruppersberger, a Baltimore County Democrat and former prosecutor. "The ... amendment handcuffs our cops, not criminals."

Dixon linked the effort to remove the restrictions to the work of her illegal-gun task force of city, state and federal authorities.

"This tool can only help strengthen our efforts in Baltimore and the whole region," she said. "We still go out and we try to collect information. But having this information just gives our local law enforcement more data."

matthew.brown@baltsun.com

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