by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

Measures enacted during the Clinton Administration designed to reduce the number of federal firearms license (FFL) holders may have had very little, if anything, to do with the drop in crime rates, according to a new study by a Pennsylvania-based criminology researcher.

Prof. Christopher Koper of the University of Pennsylvania’s Jerry Lee Center of Criminology found that dealers driven out of business by Clinton-era “reforms” of FFL regulations were not necessarily the people who were selling guns to criminals.

Koper told Gun Week that he did the study “in bits and pieces” over the course of a couple of years. He mounted the effort to determine whether the drop in crime rates could be correlated to the dramatic reduction in the number of FFL licensees.

“I just wanted to get an idea on the extent those two might be related,” he said. “I just tried to assess the extent the crime gun market dried up with the loss of these dealers.”

He determined that perhaps 30% of the crime gun market dried up with the loss of all those FFL licensees.

“Thirty percent is high enough,” Koper observed, “that I would not rule out the possibility of some impact on gun crime. It would suggest their role in supplying crime guns was much more modest than the dealers who stayed in business.”

Koper is neither a member of any gun rights organization, or supporter of gun control groups, he said.

A report on his research is included in the current edition of Criminology & Public Policy, a new journal published by the non-partisan American Society of Criminology (ASC).

The ASC organization, according to spokeswoman Natasha Frost, is the largest group of criminologists in the country. Frost told Gun Week that the new journal “focuses on the policy implications of research findings,” and asks authors “to go into more detail about their research.”

Following adoption in 1994 of the so-called reforms by the Clinton Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), 70% of the FFL holders who had been licensed before the measures took effect have gone out of business. The remaining 30%, according to Koper’s research, were high-volume retailers who have apparently improved their operating procedures and have a higher degree of adherence to the regulations.

However, Koper found, by analyzing data relating to the original sales source of crime guns from 1994 through 1998 that, while the reforms reshaped the gun business they may not have eliminated dealers who supplied guns to criminals.

The anti-gun Clinton Administration declared virtual war on FFL holders—primarily those licensees who may have sold a few guns annually, or obtained them for personal use—by portraying them as “kitchen table” or “car trunk” dealers who supplied guns to criminals. Tens of thousands of these FFL holders were driven out of business by drastically-raised license fees and other regulatory schemes, the report noted.

Surprisingly, the so-called reforms were supported by many large retail gun dealers, allegedly to eliminate competition and also as a means of, in effect, policing their own ranks. But the unintended consequence of this turned out to be a slump in the firearms business.

Ironically, Koper discovered that two-thirds of the guns recovered by police in criminal investigations came from high-volume dealers. He suggests that in the future, investigative resources be focused more on “gun dealers with unusually high ratios of (ATF gun) traces to sales.”

There are many factors involved in the reduction of crime during the 1990s, and reasons vary depending upon which source one accepts. Anti-gunners insist that passage of the Brady Law and the bans on semi-auto rifles and high capacity magazines are responsible, while pro-gunners suggest that passage of “shall-issue” concealed carry laws and “Three Strikes” laws have discouraged criminals, or put the most active felons behind bars.