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Public speaker urges council to target small group of dealers linked to majority of traced guns in city
Summary
A Brady United workshop participant told council that a small share of gun dealers supply most firearms used in violent crimes and urged the city to use trace reports and pop-up visits to crack down on violative dealers, citing a local supplier named Markle Supply Company.
During the public-comment period on June 24, Aikahana Halmaquinha, who said she had attended a Brady United workshop on gun sourcing, urged Pittsburgh City Council to focus enforcement on a small group of gun dealers she said are responsible for a disproportionate share of traced firearms used in violent crime.
Halmaquinha told council that "5% of the dealers, the gun dealers, are supplying 90% of the guns that are used in inner city crime," and urged city officials to pursue spot inspections and annual trace reports. She also named Markle Supply Company as a local supplier used by the police bureau and said it has "25 or more violations" recorded in trace information presented at the workshop. "You should look it up," she said.
Halmaquinha framed the concern as a supply-chain problem rather than an individual-user problem: local enforcement, she said, should focus on dealers that violate rules and supply guns that later appear in crimes. She recommended pop-up site visits, annual trace reporting, and coordinated action among local authorities and the Bureau of Police to disrupt those supply lines.
Council did not take formal action on the remarks during the meeting. The speaker requested that the Administration and relevant enforcement units review dealer records and consider targeted inspections and tracing as part of an overall violence-reduction strategy.
Ending: The comment asked for increased scrutiny of dealers whose sales patterns are disproportionately associated with recovered crime guns; any follow-up — such as requests for trace data, administrative inspections, or investigative work — would involve the police bureau, the city's legal office and, where relevant, federal partners and would be recorded in future committee or administrative reports.
