Gun Lobby Helps Block Data Collection by Crimefighters

For two weeks, bullets pierced two dozen cars driven through Detroit’s suburbs as police puzzled over who was firing. Unlike most states, Michigan has a tool that helped lead to an arrest: a pistol registry.

Without that database of buyers and sellers, police said the investigation would have taken longer, more people might have been injured or someone might have been killed, before they arrested an unemployed geologist in connection with the crimes on Nov. 5.