american criminal's favorite gun store - Badger Outdoors

http://www.gunguys.com/?p=1131


Wisconsin’s Top Gun Dealer Under Pressure from Community



The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has published a treasure trove of information about how crime guns are traced. Badger Outdoors, a gun shop there, was recently called out by the ATF for having the highest number of crime guns traced to it in the country.

West Milwaukee’s Badger Outdoors last year again was tops among all gun shops in the nation for selling guns that later were recovered by police during criminal investigations, according to new data from the federal government.

In 2005, there were 537 crime guns - an average of more than 10 a week - recovered and traced to Badger, the Milwaukee area’s largest gun dealer. None of the others in the top five had more than 500 crime guns traced to them, according to the document from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The ranking was released during a federal trial in which another store with a high number of crime gun traces - Trader Sports Inc. of San Leandro, Calif. - sued to try to keep its dealer’s license.

In 1998, Badger had the most crime guns traced to it among all gun dealers in the United States and then fell from the top spot, only to regain the spot last year. Badger has been criticized for selling cheap handguns, which were bought by “straw buyers” with clean records and then passed on to gang members. In a 1999 sweep, the majority of straw buyers bought the guns legally at Badger.

For his part, co-owner of the store Mick Beatovic says he’s not at fault– he blames Badger’s close situation to a high-crime area, a dearth of other gun stores in the area, and Milwaukee police’s rare policy of tracing every single gun involved in a crime.
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crime area - gun stores
military base - whores

doth protest too much, begs the question:

you sell a legal product, the customer standing in front of you passes all the checks that are required by law, do you sell or not?

So is Trader Sports - Largest gun dealer in California.

It should be expected that dealers who do the highest volume would also have the highest number of guns they sell winding up in the wrong hands. Note the statistics stated are counts rather than rates, which casts doubt on their significance.

The real question that should be asked is whether or not the store is systematically violating the law. If it is, heads should roll. If not, maybe the laws need to be revised to make it more difficult for an unqualified person to acquire a firearm.

used in a crime? Why isn't the ATF doing this? At least it would go a long way to keeping dealers honest.

The ATF was created during the Nixon administration and as part of it charter it cannot keep computerized records of gun ownership in the US. The NRA made sure of that. WHen a back round check is done either the local police or state police run the back round check and they are only looking for felony convictions or mental illness and in some cases restraining orders in domestic violence cases.

No, in most states the background check is run through the NICS system, which is Federal and (I believe) administered by the FBI. It screens not only felony convictions, but also for misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence (which also disqualify you from touching a gun, for life), etc., and probably also outstanding warrants.