State Lags in Federal Gun Cases, Study Shows : Weapons: Researchers find that prosecutions are down and violators are serving shorter sentences. Opponents of controls say the data show better enforcement is needed.

Amid a growing national clamor for toughened gun control, a new study released Saturday shows that the number of federal weapon cases has dropped more than a third in recent years, with California lagging far behind the rest of the nation.

The study also found that criminals convicted on federal weapon-related charges are serving shorter prison sentences than in past years, which researchers said suggests that federal authorities have fallen short in their attempt to target the nation’s biggest gun traffickers.

While the analysis by a research center at Syracuse University was limited to enforcement of federal weapon laws, gun control opponents immediately seized on its findings as new ammunition for their argument that federal authorities are not doing a good enough job of enforcing gun laws that are already on the books.

“We do not lack for laws. We lack enforcement of laws,” National Rifle Assn. President Charlton Heston said when told of the study. The findings, he said, “are hard to refute.”

But law enforcement officials took issue with the study, saying that raw statistics can be misleading.

“They’re saying our numbers are down, and perhaps they are, but there are things that they aren’t taking into account--for instance, better coordination with local authorities,” said an official at the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, who asked not to be identified by name.

In the last few years, federal officials have moved more aggressively to coordinate investigations with local authorities. They have referred cases to state prosecutors when possible, especially in states, such as California, with tough gun penalties, officials said. In fact, state prosecutions are up.

As a result, when federal and state weapon cases are combined, Justice Department statistics show that the number of charges actually has risen more than 20% since 1992, said one official, who asked not be identified by name.

Law enforcement officials suggested that a number of other factors--such as understaffing and a shift in investigative priorities, rather than lax enforcement--may help explain the declining weapon caseload.

Debate About Guns Fueled by Shootings

They acknowledged, however, that the study’s surprising findings may be worth a closer examination, especially given the impassioned debate on gun violence triggered by a spate of deadly shootings around the country--from the hallways of a Littleton, Colo., high school to brokerages in Atlanta to a Jewish community center in Granada Hills, Calif.

Lawmakers in Los Angeles, Sacramento and Washington have been pitching new gun control proposals at a frenzied pace in recent months, only to be met with staunch resistance from the well-heeled NRA and its supporters.

The Syracuse study, conducted by a nonpartisan research center that has gone to court to gain access to federal statistics and databases, analyzed large amounts of information on the performance of the ATF, the federal government’s lead enforcer in confiscating illegal weapons.

Among the study’s findings:

* Weapon cases that the ATF referred for prosecution have dropped 44% in recent years. The trend reversed itself last year, but the 5,510 cases referred in 1998 still fell far below the 9,885 cases given to prosecutors in 1992, researchers found.

* California saw an even sharper drop, 53%, in ATF cases, and much of the state ranked at the very bottom of the nation’s 90 federal regions, based on the size of the population. Judged by the number of cases brought per capita, three of the country’s four lowest-ranking regions were in California--with the San Francisco-based region last, the Sacramento-based region second-to-last and the Los Angeles region third-to-last among the 90. In Los Angeles, the rate of 46 ATF cases for every 10 million people was nearly 80% lower than the national average.

* Felons convicted in ATF cases nationwide are being sentenced to nearly two fewer years apiece in federal prison than they were five years ago, an average of about six years in prison today compared with eight years in 1994. The average prison sentence in California--in Los Angeles the average term is five years--dropped significantly as well, with every region in the state falling well below the national average.

Tackling Kingpins, Officials Say

Many law enforcement officials say that the declining federal caseload may reflect a shift in focus toward reining in illegal gun kingpins: those involved in large-scale interstate trafficking.

Franklin Zimring, head of the Earl Warren Legal Institute at UC Berkeley, said that ATF officials during the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush racked up large numbers of weapon prosecutions by going after low-level street felons on illegal gun charges.

“These prosecutions are literally a dime a dozen. They’re garbage prosecutions, and they have nothing to do with controlling illegal firearms commerce,” he said.

Today, one ATF official said, “we seek to prosecute the few sharks at the top rather than the numerous guppies of the criminal enterprise.” In Los Angeles in particular, the tremendous demands on resources prevent prosecutors from even bringing charges on low-level cases for guns and other offenses, said Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the local U.S. attorney’s office.

But Syracuse professor Susan Long, co-director of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which put out the report, said that the data do not support the idea that authorities have targeted more serious offenders.

Prison sentences in ATF cases are going down, not up, she noted. “So are [ATF officials] really going after more serious cases? The numbers were surprising.”

Nor does the sharply declining caseload appear to match the decline in crime rates from year to year or region to region, Long said.

A more likely explanation, Long said, is the ATF’s drop in staffing--with a 14% decline in criminal investigators in the last seven years, according to the study.

Indeed, staff reductions became such a problem in the Los Angeles region that the ATF had to close its Long Beach satellite office, said special agent Kelly Long.

Hampered by understaffing, the Southland operation has only 85 agents in an office authorized for 125. “There were several years where we did not hire. Now we are in the process of trying to bring 200 to 300 agents in agencywide,” the agent said.

Daniel S. Hinerfeld, an aide to Los Angeles City Councilman Mike Feuer, who has written a number of gun control measures in the city, said that the study underscores the need for toughened measures at both the local and federal levels.

Without aggressive enforcement, he said, “gun laws are nothing more than ink on paper.”

*

Lichtblau reported from Washington and Lait reported from Los Angeles.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Weapon Enforcement

The number of criminal referrals by the ATF peaked in 1992 across the United States and has declined even more dramatically in California.

U.S.

‘92: 9,885

‘98: 5,510

California, 1994: 332

L.A., 1994: 115

California, 1998: 156

L.A., 1998: 75

Source: Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University