US group launches campaign against 'bad apple' gun sellers

WASHINGTON: US gun control activists said Friday they are launching a national campaign against "bad apple" gun dealers who knowingly sell firearms to criminals.

"There is a small and dangerous group of guns dealers that we call 'bad apples,' that are responsible for a lot of the toll of gun violence that happens" on US streets, said Dan Gross, head of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

"The vast majority of gun dealers actually do their part and are a strong frontline of defense keeping guns out of criminal hands," Gross said during a telephone press conference.

He said that more than 80 percent of gun dealers "can actually proudly say that they do not report a single gun crime traced to their shop."

That is not the case however, for the "one percent of guns dealers (who) are actually responsible for 60 percent of all crime guns."

Gross said the campaign will begin Saturday, with an event in front of a gun shop near the midwestern US city of Chicago, which has been particularly stricken with a high level of gun violence.

The effort seeks to create a "code of conduct" among gun sellers.

The Brady Campaign said it will also begin filing lawsuits "to hold gun dealers accountable when they turn a blind eye and sell guns to criminals, and the gun traffickers and straw purchasers who supply them."

Gun control activists accuse these "bad apples" of purposefully neglecting to do legally required background checks and falsifying sales records.

The renegade gun merchants also sometimes protect criminal buyers by turning off surveillance cameras in their store.

This is the latest in a series of initiatives by those who advocate stronger gun controls in the United States, where 11,000 people were murdered by gun violence in 2011, according to FBI figures.

Firearms control activists face fierce opposition from America's powerful pro-gun lobby, which fiercely opposes any effort to limit any restriction of the second amendment of the US Constitution, which protects citizens' rights to own guns.