BeatNick

On Monday, I called attention to a bizarre sign posted throughout Philadelphia. The sign was ambiguously worded, and even if it meant what I thought I meant, I still wasn’t sure what it meant.

I wasn’t alone in my confusion.

“Who buys guns for criminals? Here ex-rapist and convict, have a 9mm,” posted one incredulous MySpacer on his buddy’s “Friend Space.”

A few days later, things are clearer. Who buys guns for criminals? The answer is straw purchasers. A straw purchase is one in which an eligible customer - a 21 year-old without a criminal record - buys a gun for an illegible customer - possibly a criminal. Straw purchases are a serious problem in Philly, and have contributed to the enormous increase in the area’s gun violence. Crack down on straw purchasers and the whole infrastructure of illegal gun trafficking crumbles.

So hopes Al Toczydlowski, head of the Gun Task Force Initiative. Spearheaded by District Attorney Lynne Abraham, Attorney General Tom Corbett, and the Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson, the Initiative has targeted straw purchases through various means, including advanced training of the Police Department and legislative measures such as the “One Gun a Month” bill.

The Initiative has also tried dissuading would-be straw purchasers through ad campaigns, bringing us back to the sign: “The gun you buy for a criminal may kill a child.” Below those words a handgun points ominously towards a schoolgirl with pigtails.

Does it make any sense to try and pluck at the heartstrings of straw purchasers? Toczyldowski thinks so. “By nature, straw purchasers have no criminal record,” Toczyldowski told me. “It’s important to send a strong message to these people.”

But it’s naive to think that having no criminal record is equivalent to never having committed a crime. And a glance at some of the profiles of arrested straw purchasers shows that these aren’t one-time offenders.

A closer look shows something else. Many straw purchasers are women. Abraham described the situation as “the same revolting picture” in an August news conference: “Women have been providing guns for their drug suppliers, their boyfriends, their former boyfriends, the father of their children.” Sure enough, just yesterday, 5 more arrest warrants connected with straw purchasing were issued. 2 of the suspects were women.

Could the sign be playing to every mother’s fear in order to dissuade women from gun trafficking? Maybe. But if you ask me, every dollar spent on advertising is wasted. Man or woman, a straw purchaser is just a criminal who hasn’t been caught yet.

The key word is “yet.” With 78 arrests and 300 ongoing investigations, the Initiative is off to a good start. Only time will tell if it actually alters Philadelphia’s violent landscape.

BeatNick appears every Monday and Thursday.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 27th, 2007 at 10:41 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.