Sacramento City Councilman Kevin McCarty highlights a terrible city statistic: In the past seven years, more young people have died from gun violence than from traffic accidents.
To help change that, McCarty introduced an ordinance that requires firearms dealers to thumbprint, get a driver's license (or other government-issued photo ID) and report the names and addresses of anyone buying ammunition.
It has now been a year since the council passed the ordinance, and the results are clear. Sacramento police hail it as an effective tool to track down criminals and known gang members who possess weapons and ammunition illegally.
It doesn't stop adults (including criminals) from going into a store and buying ammunition. Sacramento doesn't yet have instant checks that would stop a criminal from buying ammunition at the point of sale.
But the ordinance does require that the seller make a record of the sale, which is transmitted electronically to the Sacramento Police Department. Police, working with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, then are able to use the records as an intelligence-gathering tool.
Through routine examination of ammunition sales, police can identify some purchasers who illegally possess ammunition and firearms. In the last year, the ammunition logs have been used as a basis for securing search warrants, some of which have resulted in the recovery of illegal firearms and more than 800 rounds of ammunition.
Police (and allied agencies) regularly use the ammunition logs in criminal investigations, resulting in felony charges filed by the district attorney.
Incredibly, despite the ease of crossing into other areas of the county and despite having to identify themselves with a driver's license and leave a thumbprint, some criminals do buy ammunition at dealers within the city limits.
This is a reason for neighboring cities and counties also to adopt ordinances requiring the logging of ammunition sales.
But even where criminals choose to travel outside city limits to buy ammunition or to pay higher prices in the black market, Sacramento's ordinance makes acquisition of ammunition more difficult for criminals and gang members. As a September 2006 study looking at the ammunition sales ordinance in Los Angeles ("The Criminal Purchase of Firearm Ammunition," published in Injury Prevention) noted, these higher costs "may cause criminals to economize on firearm use and, in turn, reduce gun violence."
A principal aim of the Sacramento ordinance – and similar ones in Oakland, San Francisco and Los Angeles – is to reduce easy opportunities for criminals to use a firearm.
Another is to hinder under-age buyers from easy access to ammunition.
But even where the ordinance doesn't deter purchases by criminals or underage buyers, it does help police to follow these illegal buyers back to their firearms.
The Sacramento ordinance provides just one more small tool to help reduce gun violence. But results would be even stronger if surrounding jurisdictions adopted similar ordinances. This is an area where regional cooperation counts.
McCarty and Sacramento police should take their presentation on the road to persuade neighboring cities and counties to pass ordinances like Sacramento's.
