A swath of destruction from Asbury Park to Oxnard: the gun report

[pscot]

Guns are being traded for drugs in Vermont and Massachusetts, and it has law enforcement worried, the Boston Globe reports. Vermont is grappling with a heroin epidemic that started for many as a prescription drug habit, and Massachusetts has tough gun laws, creating a toxic opportunity.

Cheap handguns from dealers and gun shows are abundant in Vermont — where permits are not required and there is no registration — and fetch twice the price in Massachusetts. Meanwhile, a bag of heroin that sells for $4 on the streets of Springfield commands $40 in rural Vermont.

“You don’t know which one came first, the chicken or the egg, but guns are being traded for drugs, and drug dealers are coming here with their product,” Jim Mostyn, an A.T.F. agent, told the Globe.

Within the last three years, 12 guns at crime scenes have been traced back to Vermont, but police said the number of guns shuttled illegally between the states is nearly impossible to calculate. The state ranks number one in New England in gun ownership, with nearly half the population in possession of a firearm.

The ease of getting guns in Vermont, whether through private sales or straw purchasers, is “like setting up two security lines at the airport and letting the criminals choose which line to go through,” Ann Braden, president of Gun Sense Vermont, told the Globe.

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