## Metadata - Author: [[Erik Larson ]] - Full Title: Lethal Passage - Category: #books ## Highlights - Clearly, individual responsibility and socioeconomic tension are the tectonic plates that shape crime. As one gun buff proposed to me, half in jest, the way to reduce crime is to buy back guns not with cash, as many cities have tried, but with jobs. ([Location 100](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ACH1KK&location=100)) - A Baltimore police detective described Virginia to me this way: “It’s the only place I know where you can go get gas, diapers, and a gun at the same time.” ([Location 1685](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ACH1KK&location=1685)) - ATF stands in an almost untenable position. It must police the nation’s 245,000 licensed firearms dealers—known in the industry as FFLs, or Federal Firearms Licensees—with only four hundred inspectors, each of whom must also conduct inspections of wineries, liquor distributors, distilleries, breweries, tobacco producers, and the country’s 10,500 explosives users and manufacturers. ([Location 2107](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ACH1KK&location=2107)) - “One of the usually ignored concerns about this industry that 1 would underscore is the effect of exposure on vulnerable members of the community,” Dr. Dietz told me. “It’s the same concern that I have always emphasized ought to be foremost in our thinking about the effects of pornography. It is not relevant what effect if any either pornographic or violent materials have on college-educated, nonantisocial, non-substance-abusing, nonpsychotic persons. What is relevant is the effect on uneducated, substance-abusing, antisocial, or psychotic persons with little or no family or community control, in circumstances where they think they have no witnesses.” In fact, he argued, vulnerable readers migrate to such material and may incorporate the “worldview” of the publication into their thinking. “My concern,” he said, “is not just that one can learn to build a better bomb this way, but also that through sufficient immersion in this subculture one comes to find a greater need to build the bomb.” ([Location 3048](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ACH1KK&location=3048)) - Even bomb investigators, the people who most often encounter the fruits of the violence-industry’s advice, oppose banning such books. “You can’t say they can’t print this stuff,” said Joe Grubisic, commander of the Chicago bomb squad. “I don’t like it, but I really don’t know what the solution is. I don’t want a police state.” ([Location 3074](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ACH1KK&location=3074)) - Where the NRA has been most influential, however—and where its influence has been least acknowledged or appreciated—is in defining the vocabulary of the firearms debate and thus, in a sense, winning the debate before it even began. The NRA accomplished this bit of intellectual gerrymandering by deftly marketing an ideology that posits any and all firearm regulation as a direct challenge to the U.S. Constitution and, by inference, to America itself. ([Location 3158](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ACH1KK&location=3158)) - After Carter and his allies seized control of the NRA in the 1977 Cincinnati Revolt, the NRA heeled sharply to the right. It shifted emphasis from promoting the shooting sports to battling firearm regulations, a shift made official in 1977 when the association amended its New York State charter to include the goal of promoting “the right of the individual of good repute to keep and bear arms as a common law and constitutional right both of the individual citizen and of the collective militia.” ([Location 3214](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ACH1KK&location=3214)) - But the NRA had moved so far to the right, had become so ardent in its opposition to any and all firearms regulation, that it soon began to lose some of its closest friends outside the organization. Most important, it alienated the law-enforcement community. In the late 1980s it opposed legislation aimed at outlawing armor-piercing ammunition and at banning such assault weapons as the MAC-10 and the Cobray. ([Location 3224](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ACH1KK&location=3224)) - We accomplish little in this country by enacting bans on assault weapons and establishing waiting periods without first addressing the regulatory vacuum that allows manufacturers, distributors, and dealers to shrug off all responsibility for the diversion of guns from legitimate gun-distribution channels. ([Location 3546](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ACH1KK&location=3546)) - Existing federal laws contain gaping loopholes that allow the free flow of guns from legitimate channels to the bad guys. We have seen, for example, that a consumer who makes a false statement in filling out form 4473 commits a felony; a dealer who does likewise commits only a misdemeanor. Dealers must keep detailed records of their sales of guns from their stores, but a private citizen can sell a gun to a friend with no restriction. A dealer operating at a gun show must follow all federal regulations, but a private citizen at an adjacent table can sell guns from his personal collection without so much as a signature. Federal law prohibits certain classes of individuals such as convicted murderers and dope peddlers from buying guns, then relies on those same individuals to exclude themselves by giving honest answers on form 4473. ([Location 3595](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B005ACH1KK&location=3595))