The attorneys general of the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia announced they will begin sharing information on gun trafficking collected by their respective police departments at a joint press conference on Friday.
Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring, Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh, and District of Columbia Attorney General Karl A. Racine met on Friday afternoon to determine ways they could coordinate efforts to combat gun trafficking in the region.
After the closed-door meeting, the three Democrats told reporters they would be designating somebody in each of their offices to "work with their counterparts in the other states to establish a timeline and structure for regular interaction." The three offices intend to share "strategies, criminal information, and opportunities to collaborate on initiatives that will prevent and reduce gun violence in the national capital region," according to a statement issued after the event.
The attorneys general said they hoped the information sharing and cooperation would lead to more prosecutions of criminals who commit gun crimes or illegally traffic firearms across state borders.
When asked why the offices were not already sharing such information or vigorously pursuing trafficking prosecutions, Racine said many cases fall under federal jurisdiction, but couldn't provide a reason why information wasn’t already regularly shared.
"We can't speak to why prior attorneys general didn't get together, but we've made a commitment ourselves to not only focus on issues that concern criminal justice, like guns, but also the heroin epidemic," he said.
Virginia was identified as a source of guns used in crimes a number of times during the press conference. However, the most recently available FBI data shows that Virginia's 2014 violent crime rate, at 196.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, was less than half that of Maryland, at 446.1 per 100,000, and six times lower than D.C., at 1,244.4. The murder rate for each jurisdiction mirrors those trends as well with Virginia experiencing a rate of 4.1 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, Maryland at 6.1 per 100,000, and D.C. at 15.9.
When asked why Virginia experiences far lower violent crime and murder rates than the Washington, D.C. or Maryland, Herring credited the work of Virginia police.
"We have a lot of outstanding law enforcement agents all across the state," Herring said. "We are working hard to keep our neighborhoods and communities safe all across Virginia. The fact that Virginia is a source state for illegal guns is not something that I think we should be proud of and, if we get information about how those guns are getting into the hands of criminals, if there are laws that are broken then I'm going to prosecute those and work with local law enforcement and local prosecutors as well as state and federal to make sure those crimes are prosecuted."
Maryland's attorney general insisted that Virginia experiences just as much gun violence as the jurisdictions it borders. "Virginia suffers gun deaths at a rate about the same as do Maryland and the District of Columbia," Frosh said, likely including gun suicides in his calculation. "Even though it's easier to purchase guns in Virginia the number of deaths they experience, the gun violence they experience, isn't merely exported it's experienced by Virginians themselves at home."
The information sharing touted by the attorneys general will begin immediately and will encompass trafficking in both guns and drugs.