BOSTON -- Massachusetts has some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation. Yet Team 5 Investigates has learned those laws haven't stopped the sale of illegal weapons, or the carnage they cause.

NewsCenter 5's Sean Kelly reported Thursday night that the firearms responsible for thousands of gun crimes all over Massachusetts are easily accessible, and the rogue dealers selling them are rarely put out of business.

Team 5 Investigates spent months interviewing police, prosecutors and the criminals pulling the trigger in the Massachusetts arms race to find out where these crimes guns come from.

The chosen gun for one drug dealer was a 9 mm semi automatic pistol. "Because it puts a nice hole in you, it never fails," the drug dealer said. Another criminal, a 24-year-old man known as "Citizen X," said he carries a .38 for the same reason, "This right here, you can get for a buck, a buck 50 ($100-$150). As long as it shoots, you're all set."

Gang members told Team 5 Investigates they like small firearms for their size. They're light, and easy to hide. When we asked one gangster how long it would take to get a gun, he said "Ten minutes; it's all about knowing the right people." Another one told us, "If you want a gun, it's easy to get. You go to the block, and you're all set."

Sometimes criminals don't even pay for their firearms. It's a growing phenomenon law enforcement faces, the "community gun." Weapons big and small stashed in parks, basements and outside schools. "You know automatically if you go down to where everybody meets that that gun is always going to be there," said Citizen X.

But how does it get there in the first place? And how do criminals all over Massachusetts responsible for more than 4,000 gun crimes a year manage to get their fingers on a trigger so easily? They visit men like Jermaine "Rico" Politano in Taunton, or Germaine Clinkscales in Brockton, seen in some undercover video shot by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in their efforts to crack down on street-level trafficking.

According to Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis, "The problem, though, is instead of a few large illegal dealers in this state, we now have many small dealers who will sell maybe one, two, maybe five guns and there are many more of them, unfortunately."

Smaller dealers like Sukia O'Mere and Niya Mills who prosecutors say drove to Alabama last year and bought a small stash of weapons to sell for $800 a piece back in Boston.

Street -level trafficking, however, is not the only avenue for illegal gun purchases. Team 5 Investigates went undercover to a gun show in Vermont. Within minutes, we found a federally licensed dealer who was willing to sell us a semi automatic weapon and its magazine, even though we did not have a permit.

"We'll sell you the mag; we'll sell you the gun. What you do with it after you leave here is up to you. If you're going to take it somewhere where it's illegal, then you pay the price for that, not us," said the dealer.

Team 5 Investigates also found a private seller who was well aware of the law, and who said he was more than willing to break it.

Seller: "I'm not really supposed to sell handguns to Vermont residents, to non-Vermont residents."

Team 5: "I was just hoping I'd be able to find somebody up here and let money do the talking, you know?"

Seller: "Well you know the old Italian saying: make me an offer I can't refuse. You know what I mean? Then we can do something illegal."

Team 5: "I'm willing to do $2,500 cash."

Seller: "Twenty-five hundred cash, that's tempting. I was figuring around the same thing. You got that kind of money?"

We told him we'd have to get it.

Team 5: "I'll go do what I gotta do. Thank you, sir."

But we never went back to purchase a gun from either dealer and no laws were broken.

John Rosenthal is the founder of the anti-gun group Stop Handgun Violence. "I'd say being a gun dealer and a gun trafficker is great business when the federal government has virtually no effective gun laws to prevent it. We are surrounded by Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont where you don't even need an id or a background check to buy a gun," said Rosenthal.

Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis agreed with Rosenthal. "That particular problem really makes it difficult for us to get to the bottom of who is supplying a gun," said Davis.

Plus there's no national database to track where a gun goes after the first time it's sold. Congress hasn't allowed it. In a lot of cases, serial numbers are obliterated so that guns can't be traced. And laws haven't kept up with the underground market allowing dealers to avoid trafficking charges.

Despite that, U.S. Attorney and Acting Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms Director Michael Sullivan is not proposing any changes. "I think generally speaking, the federal statutes are responsive to the challenges," said Sullivan.

So why, then, are the number of federal convictions against gun runners and dealers in Massachusetts down 50 percent from last year?

"Though the federal numbers may be down in regards to gun trafficking, it doesn't necessarily mean that we're not being even more aggressive in trying to address this particular problem," said Sullivan.

Increasingly, Sullivan says, he and his prosecutors are pushing more cases to the state level. But Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley says gun traffickers won't be permanently put out of business until the law is changed to go after smaller dealers. "A legislative idea that we will propose is just the mere possession of three or more firearms would infer that you were going to distribute," said Conley.

Changing gun laws will be difficult, however, because the gun lobby spends millions of dollars convincing lawmakers that we don't need more gun laws, but better enforcement of the ones we already have.