Under the law, investigators cannot reveal federal firearms tracing information that shows how often a dealer sells guns that end up seized in crimes. The law effectively shields retailers from lawsuits, academic study and public scrutiny. It also keeps the spotlight off the relationship between rogue gun dealers and the black market in firearms.
Such information used to be available under a simple Freedom of Information Act request. But seven years ago, under pressure from the gun lobby, Congress blacked out the information by passing the so-called Tiahrt amendment, named for Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.). The law removed from the public record a government database that traces guns recovered in crimes back to the dealers.
"It was extraordinary, and the most offensive thing you can think of," said Chuck Wexler, director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit group for police chiefs. "The tracing data, which is now secret, helped us see the big picture of where guns are coming from."
The amendment also kept the data from being used by cities and interest groups to sue the firearms industry, an avenue of attack modeled after the lawsuits against tobacco companies. "They were trying to drive a stake through the heart of the
industry," said Lawrence Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group for firearms dealers and makers. "It took an act of Congress to stop the litigation."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/23/AR2010102302996.html
The gun industry protects its profits by hiding statistics and stifling criminal investigations, no matter the cost in human lives.
Attached to the article is video about the protected Realco criminal straw purchase store.
Expect a lot more corporation protection acts from the next Congress if we lose the House.