{"id":1454,"date":"2006-08-06T22:01:55","date_gmt":"2006-08-07T03:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ibiblio.org\/pjones\/wordpress\/?p=1454"},"modified":"2006-08-06T22:04:31","modified_gmt":"2006-08-07T03:04:31","slug":"guns-of-charlotte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/guns-of-charlotte\/","title":{"rendered":"Guns of Charlotte"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>He called the police station to try to get them to take a handgun he found when cleaning up his parents house as they were moving to a retirement community. The operator at the Charlotte Police station told him to take it to a pawnshop or a gun shop  and he&#8217;d get good money for it. My old friend persisted. He wanted the gun destroyed and the registration marked as such. He hadn&#8217;t lived in Charlotte for a long time and in his new home state they were careful to get rid of handguns.<br \/>\nWhen the officers showed up to take the gun, the first one asked almost kidding but not quite that he be given the gun as a gift. It was a real nice gun.<br \/>\nMy friend insisted that the gun be destroyed. The officers looked at him quizzically. Then took the gun and left.<\/p>\n<p>Afterwards I found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nypost.com\/news\/regionalnews\/66573.htm\">this article in the New York Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>GUN SHOPS&#8217; ROTTEN GOODS MAKE FOR SOUR APPLE<\/p>\n<p>By Andy Geller<\/p>\n<p>May 25, 2006 &#8212; The nation&#8217;s five worst-of-the-worst gun dealers sold weapons that were used in 64 Big Apple crimes, new statistics revealed yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>The majority of the guns, 44, came from the Hyatt Coin &#038; Gun Shop in Charlotte, N.C.<\/p>\n<p>Hyatt, which sold 405 guns used in crimes across the nation last year, was fifth on a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives list of the top five sellers of guns traced to crimes.<\/p>\n<p>Topping the nationwide list is Badger Outdoors of West Milwaukee, Wis., which sold 537 guns. It was followed by Trader Sports of San Leandro, Calif. (447), Elliot&#8217;s Small Arms of Jefferson, La. (442) and Don&#8217;s Guns and Galleries of Indianapolis (431).<\/p>\n<p>Based on ATF statistics from 1994 to 2001 &#8211; the latest available &#8211; the center said that in addition to the 44 guns sold by Hyatt used in New York City crimes, Trader Sports sold 11, Don&#8217;s Guns sold four, Badger sold three and Elliot&#8217;s Small Arms sold two. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And <a href=\"http:\/\/charlotte.creativeloafing.com\/gyrobase\/Content?oid=oid%3A7564\">this recent Creative Loafing article about the surge in homicides and in robberies in Charlotte in the past year<\/a> and a proposal to deal with the problem by getting guns off the street:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Since most of the crimes were gun-related, local, state and federal law enforcement teamed up to target illicit firearms traffickers who were supplying young people with guns.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In every city where they have done this it has been met with resistance, but ultimately been very successful,&#8221; said assistant city manager Keith Parker.<\/p>\n<p>Making an Operation Ceasefire-style program work here would mean dramatically reforming Mecklenburg County&#8217;s chaotic, under-funded court system. Removing a city&#8217;s worst criminals from the streets requires targeted prosecution and a refusal to plea bargain. For a criminal justice system like Mecklenburg&#8217;s, which uses plea bargains to stay afloat, that could prove to be a challenge.<\/p>\n<p>But with gang members moving to the Charlotte area in record numbers, and the city&#8217;s homicide rate at a 10-year high of 85, something has to give. After robberies jumped 32 percent in 2005, police learned armed robbery was becoming a gateway crime for young gang members.<\/p>\n<p>Nearly a third of robbery suspects under 18 were identified by police as gang members, while only 11 percent of suspects between 21 and 30 were.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>He called the police station to try to get them to take a handgun he found when cleaning up his parents house as they were moving to a retirement community. The operator at the Charlotte Police station told him to take it to a pawnshop or a gun shop and he&#8217;d get good money for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alumni-and-other-friends","category-general","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1454\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/pjones\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}