Jason Chaffetz: Are we doing enough to prosecute gun crimes?

In the clamor to tighten gun restrictions following the horrific massacre at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last week, one important fact has been overlooked. Gun laws are only as good as their implementation. Before we talk about new gun laws, perhaps it’s time we started to enforce the ones we’ve already passed.

A remarkable drop in gun crime prosecutions and convictions marked President Obama’s eight years in office. Mother Jones reported that “under Obama, federal weapons prosecutions have declined to their lowest levels in nearly a decade,” citing a 2013 report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Remember, it was during this same period that Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department deliberately and willingly sold drug cartels nearly 2,000 guns under Operation Fast and Furious.

In Chicago, the U.S. attorney filed only one gun prosecution for every 25 cases of gun violence, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive. The report found similar disparities in other major American cities, including St. Louis, Philadelphia, Detroit and Houston.

Prosecutors have told me gun laws are difficult cases to prosecute, without much jury appeal. Consequently, there aren’t many prosecutions. In 2015, only 6,000 convictions were won nationwide – a 15 percent drop from five years earlier.

Although anyone failing a background check to purchase a weapon can technically be prosecuted, they seldom are. During my service in Congress as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, I asked the Justice Department to provide specific numbers of gun prosecutions. I got delays, questions, and ultimately convoluted answers about how many gun crimes the department actually prosecuted.

Source: foxnews