The Trump administration has stepped up prosecutions of weapons offenses, bringing 8,403 cases in the first 10 months of fiscal year 2018, a 22.5 percent increase from the previous year, reports Courthouse News Service. TRAC Reports of Syracuse University reported that the 94 U.S. Attorneys have prosecuted 41.3 percent more weapons cases than they did five years ago, under the Obama Administration. The U.S. Attorney in St. Louis has prosecuted the most weapons cases this fiscal year—more than 500. Ranking second and third were U.S. Attorneys in Memphis and New Orleans. “As part of our violence reduction strategy, we want to take guns out of the hands of dangerous people, and take violent offenders off our streets before they commit the next shooting with an illegally obtained or possessed firearm,” said U.S. Attorney Michael Dunavant in Memphis.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said prosecutors also are targeting people who are prohibited from owning firearms, such as felons, and guns that are illegal in themselves, such as those with serial numbers scratched off. David Kennedy of the National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College of Criminal Justice said the focus on prosecuting federal firearms offenses to too simplistic; U.S. Attorneys do too little on their own to deter crime. Most gun crimes are first handled by state law enforcement, Kennedy said, and federal attorneys choose a small fraction of those cases. “What goes to federal and what doesn’t is effectively completely unpredictable on the street,” Kennedy said. “So if you’re somebody walking around in the community and you’re thinking whether or not to carry a gun or whether to commit a gun crime, you may not even know that the federal policy has changed. If you’re not aware that the U.S. attorney is taking more of these cases, it’s not going to affect your behavior.”