WASHINGTON — President Clinton announced Saturday that 10 cities, including Los Angeles, will be added to a computer system that helps authorities pursue illegal gun traffickers by tracing guns sold to juveniles.
Clinton said the program, which currently involves 17 cities, including Salinas and Inglewood, has tracked 37,000 guns used in crimes and that many of them were linked to gun-selling rings and dishonest gun dealers.
"Too many of our young people are drawn to guns and violence as a way of life," Clinton said in his weekly radio address. "Over the past decades, the number of gun murders by juveniles has skyrocketed by 300%. This is simply unacceptable. We know we must break this deadly trend."
The program, which Clinton proposed during his 1996 reelection campaign, takes information provided by local law enforcement officials on guns they have seized and feeds it into a computer system run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The information is then matched against other databases in an attempt to trace guns back to their sources.
The need is acute in Los Angeles, which is one of the nation's leading centers of gun crimes. Each year, according to ATF estimates, about 30,000 guns are recovered in Los Angeles County, overwhelming the ability of authorities to trace the weapons' origins by using the traditional channels of fax or telephone.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block and interim city Police Chief Bayan Lewis embraced the idea when contacted about the program last week, said Jim Adamcik, an assistant chief of the ATF office in Los Angeles. The ATF plans to begin training personnel from both departments soon.
"For the first time, we know where the juveniles are getting these guns, how they are getting them and what kinds of guns they are using," Clinton said. "Guns are finding their way quickly from legitimate retail stores to black markets through a network of gun traffickers and corrupt gun dealers.
*
"Make no mistake--gun traffickers are funneling guns to lawless youth," Clinton added. "We know how they operate, and we intend to shut them down."
An ATF analysis released Saturday said 4 in 10 guns used in crimes and recovered by police were in the possession of juveniles and that the most commonly used gun for individuals younger than 24 was a semiautomatic pistol.
