By The Editors

For the second time within weeks, a new study has focused attention on the central role a small number of firearms stores in supplying guns that are later used in the commission of crimes. And on the fact that weak federal oversight effectively “keeps the spotlight off the relationship between rogue gun dealers and the black market in firearms.”

So declared The Washington Post last week in the first article of a three-part series on how often guns, usually bought under false pretenses from a small number of gun stores in Virginia and Maryland, quickly come into the possession of police in the metropolitan Washington area in the course of a criminal investigation. The newspaper’s reporters sifted through hundreds of thousands of state and local police records to determine where guns confiscated by police in investigating crimes had originally been sold. In both states (the District doesn’t allow firearms dealers to sell guns on a walk-in basis), the overwhelming majority of crime guns came from a handful of dealers.

The findings reaffirm what has long been known about the relationship between crime guns and firearms stores. Yet, as the Post series pointed out, federal laws, enacted by Congress under pressure from the gun lobby “shields retailers from lawsuits, academic study and public scrutiny.”

Earlier this month, a coalition of nearly 600 mayors across the country published a study asserting that strong state gun laws sharply reduced the likelihood that illegally trafficked guns would end up in the hands of criminals. The group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, is chaired by Mayors Michael Bloomberg, of New York, and Thomas Menino, of Boston, who have been outspoken in their advocacy of gun-control measures.