By The Editors

Effective gun laws sharply reduce the likelihood that illegally trafficked guns will end up in the hands of criminals, a new study claims. It concludes that if more states followed the lead of those with strong gun laws and enacted such measures, it could substantially reduce the number of murders involving guns and save thousands of lives.

The report, “Trace The Guns: The Link Between Gun Laws and Interstate Gun Trafficking,”(PDF) was produced by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a coalition of nearly 600 mayors across the country, which has become increasingly active in urging the adoption of tougher gun laws. The bipartisan group, led by Mayors Thomas Menino, of Boston, and Michael Bloomberg, of New York, said such a step would likely reduce the number of murders in which a gun or guns were involved from the 12,000 that occurred last year.

The 42-page documents uses data tracing the purchase history of more than 145,000 guns recovered from crime scenes across the country in 2009 by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. It compares states that have enacted ten gun laws which law enforcement officials and criminal justice experts say offers effective regulation of guns with ten states that have only a very few such laws in order to pinpoint which states have a high rate of illegal trafficking in guns which are later involved in the commission of crimes.

Its major findings are that last year, just ten states with a weak gun-law structure were responsible for exporting 49 percent of the 43,000 guns that crossed state lines and were involved in the commission of a crime; that the guns exported from those states are most likely to have been illegally trafficked; and that guns coming from these states are likely to be soon – within two years – involved in some fashion in a crime.

The gun laws the Mayors organization favors include such provisions as requiring background checks on all handgun sales at gun shows, banning the falsifying of information about the buyer of the gun; not conducting a background check of the buyer, and using a “straw-purchaser” to buy the gun; and failing to report all lost or stolen guns to a law enforcement agency, and levy criminal penalties. The report states that law enforcement officials and policy leaders consistently cited these laws as critical to curbing illegal gun trafficking.

The report is likely the opening salvo of a new effort by the Mayor’s group to build support for adoption of strong gun laws as a weapon in the fight against crime.

A spokesman for the National Rifle Association, the nation’s chief, powerful gun lobby, said the report was based on flawed information and called it ‘a cute little P.R. stunt.”