Arrow-right Camera
The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Atf Enforcing Law To Take Guns Away From Abusers People Convicted Of Domestic Violence Are Prohibited From Owning Firearms

Associated Press

Federal law enforcement officials are bracing for an inundation of phone calls from domestic-abuse victims who want guns taken away from their abusers.

A measure prohibiting gun ownership by people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence was passed by Congress last year. The Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is enforcing it.

“In almost every state, ATF is going to be the enforcement arm of first resort, because there is no state law” lifting firearms from those abusers, agency Director John Magaw told the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the Treasury Department.

The agency “may not have the personnel to carry out all these investigations,” he said Tuesday, and that could create problems.

“If we don’t do it and someone gets killed as a result of it, we might be left holding the bag,” Magaw said. “I don’t know if you want ATF to handle these cases, but I don’t know how we get out of it.”

Declining to predict how many calls the agency will get, Magaw said, “We need to make sure we’re doing what this committee wants us to do on this.”

Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., chairman of the subcommittee, said he hoped ATF would not simply arrest people found to be wrongfully owning guns but would warn them of the new law first. He also expressed concern that the law could have significant budgetary impacts.

Closer to home, about 10 law enforcement officers in the Treasury Department have lost their gun-carrying rights because of the law, Raymond Kelly, Treasury’s undersecretary for enforcement, told the panel. The law does not exempt military personnel either.

Enforcement of the law is complicated by the fact that not all states have crime databases that include misdemeanor domestic violence, Kelly said.

The government is developing computerized databases to enable instant checks of backgrounds before handgun sales are allowed, an evolution of the Brady Law requiring five-day waits for background checks until instant checks are operable.