From: lvc@cbnews.cb.att.com (Larry Cipriani)
Subject: The Story of a Gun by Erik Larson, part 6 of 8 or so
Organization: Ideology Busters, Inc.
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 21:48:09 GMT
Keywords: atlantic magazine, anti-gun baloney


THE STORY OF A GUN (part 6)
By Erik Larson

THE REGULATORS
   Gun aficionados may liken the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to
the Gestapo, but in its relationship with America's gun dealers the ATF be-
haves more like an indulgent parent.  This is partly the result of restrictions
imposed by budget and statute, and partly an institutional reluctance to
offend its primary source of investigative leads or to provoke the can-
tankerous gun lobby.  The ATF is in the business not of seeking to prevent
the migration of weapons, a spokesman told me, buy of building and preserving
a paper trail for the day when those weapons will be used to commit major
crimes.
   In fairness, the ATF, like the dealers it monitors, is in an almost un-
tenable position.  It must police the nation's 245,000 licensed firearms
dealers with only 400 inspectors, each of whom must also conduct inspections
of wineries, breweries, distillers, liquor distributors, tobacco producers,
and the country's 10,500 explosives users and manufacturers.
   At the same time, the agency is obliged by law to grant a firearms license
to virtually anyone who asks for one, provided that the applicant has never
been convicted of a felony and has $30 to cover the minimum licensing fee.
In 1990, of the 34,336 Americans who applied for a license, only seventy-five
had their applications denied.
   Depending on one's stance in the gun debate, the application process is
either too stringent or appallingly easy.  An applicant doesn't have to de-
monstrate any knowledge of firearms, not even whether he knows the difference
between a pistol and a revolver.  It is much harder to get a license to
operate a powerboat on Chesapeake Bay, to become a substitute teacher in New
Jersey, or to get a California driver's license - and far, far harder to get
a Maryland permit to carry a single handgun - than it is to get a license
that enables you to acquire at wholesale prices thousands of varieties of
weapons and have them shipped right to your home.  Roughly half of federal
firearms licensees don't maintain bona fide stores, according to the ATF,
but operate instead out of their homes.  Many sell guns at gun shows; many
don't deal guns at all but hold a license simply in order to buy their guns
at wholesale prices.  A small but obviously important proportion use their
licenses to buy guns wholesale for distribution to inner-city arms traffickers.
   My neighbors may not want to hear this, but last May 15 I applied for a
federal firearms license as part of an effort to inject myself as deeply as
possible into America's gun culture.  The two-page application, ATF Form 7,
asked which grade of license I wanted.  I could choose among nine levels,
costing from $30 to $3,000, the most expensive qualifying the holder to import
"destructive devices" such as mortars, bazookas, and other weapons with a
barrel-bore diameter of half an inch or more.  The form asked the same eight
questions about a person's criminal past and mental health which appear on
Form 4473.
   I received my license on June 22, well within the forty-five days in which
the ATF is required to accept or deny an application.  No one called to
verify my application.  No one interviewed me to see if in fact I planned to
sell weapons.  And I was not required by federal law to check with authorities
in Maryland and Baltimore about specific local statutes that might affect my
ability to peddle guns in the heart of my manicured, upscale, utterly es-
stablished Baltimore neighborhood.  As far as the federal government was
concerned, I was in business, and could begin placing orders for as many
weapons as I chose.
   If the cirrent rate of licensing continues, the number of federal firearms
licensees will double in the next decade, to well over half a million - even
though the fortunes of domestic arms manufacturers are likely to continue
their current decline.  With more-intense competition for the shrinking gun-
consumer dollar will come far greater incentive to do only the minimum re-
quired by law to keep guns out of the wrong hands.
   Dealers who violate the law will get caughtm the ATF is fond of saying.
And that's largely true.  When law-enforcement officials actually request a
federal trace, the ATF tracing network often proves a very effective inves-
tigative tool, both in solving crimes and in identifying renegade dealers.
A fundamental problem with this approach, however, is that by the time the
ATF tracing network gets involved, the guns in question have been used in
crime, typically serious crime involving homicide, assault, or narcotics
peddling.
   Current statistics suggest that the ATF is reluctant to police the vast
dealer network.  From 1975 through 1990 the ATF revoked an average of ten
licenses a year.  The low was in 1978, with none, and the high in 1986, with
twenty-seven.  This rate seems low given the sheer numbers of licenses and
the rate of violations discovered whenever the ATF's skeleton crew of in-
spectors does routine compliance audits.  In 1990, for example, inspectors
conducted 8,471 of these routine inspections; they found violations in 90
percent of them.
   The ATF publicly argues that the vast majority of licensees are honest,
law-abiding citizens, and that only "one or two" go bad.  Even if true, this
arguement would hardly be comforting, given the speed with which guns migrate.
A single illicit dealer can put hundreds, perhaps thousands, of weapons into
the hands of would-be killers and felons before a sufficient number of his
weapons are used in crimes, and enough of these are traced, to raise the ATF's
suspicions.  The fact is, many dealers do operate illegally, as the ATF
discovers on those rare occasions when it takes a preventive approach to
firearms-law enforcement.  A classic example of such enforcement, and the
kind that ought to be pursued as a matter of routine, is Project Detroit,
an ongoing effort by the ATF and the Detroit police to trace as many guns
confiscated in that city as possible.
   In its report on the first phase of Project Detroit, covering guns con-
fiscated by the Detroit police from January of 1989 to April of 1990, the
ATF, typically, was careful to note, "just because [a federal firearms
licensee] has sold a large number of weapons that werew subsequently used in
crimes does not necessarily indicate the [licensee] is intentionally diverting
weapons to the criminal element."  Large-volume dealers, the report explained,
would necessarily experience more traces.
   Yet of the five licensed dealers who turned up most often in Project
Detroit traces, four became the targets of full-scale ATF investigations.
The worst offender was Sherman Butler, of Sterling Heights, Michigan, near
Detroit, whose Sherm's Guns accounted for twenty-nine traces stemming from
a range of crimes that included at least two homicides.  Butler's specialty
was the sale of S.W.Daniel semi-automatics modified to include a sixteen-inch
barrel and shoulder stock, thus qualifying them as long rifles and allowing
customers to avoid more-stringent federal and state rules governing handgun
sales, such as Michigan's requirement that anyone buying a handgun must
first have a state license to purchase.  For $125 extra, however, Butler
threw in a pistol-length barrel and enough of a pistol frame - a pistol
"upper receiver" - to allow buyers quickly to turn their carbines into
semi-automatic pistols.
   In all, this first phase of Project Detroit involved the tracing of 1,226
weapons, leading to investigations of thirteen licensed dealers and successful
prosecutions against ten.  Two suspects died.  One case is pending.  The ATF
discovered that three of these dealers had, as a routine business practice,
obliterated the serial number on every gun they received from wholesalers.
"We estimate," the report said, "that over 3,000 firearms were sold by these
dealers, and that law enforcement officers will be recovering them in various
crimes for years to come."
   The Project Detroit report failed to note what ought to be the most
troubling finding of its investigations: that apparently honest dealers
accounted for the remaining 1,000 traces, a fact that testifies again to the
high costs imposed on the rest of us by even legitimate gun shops.  Indeed,
of the top ten dealers, four weren't investigated by the ATF but nonetheless
accounted for ten to twenty traces each, including traces involving at least
four homicides.  In all, Project Detroit traced guns sold by legitimate
dealers from New York to Alaska and used subsequently in at least two kid-
nappings, thirty-four homicides, and scores of narcotics offenses - again,
from only 1,226 traced weapons.
   In his introduction ot the report, Bernard La Forest, the special agent
in charge, wrote, "What would the results indicate if we had the capability
of successfully tracing 10,000 to 15,000 weapons seized by all law enforce-
ment agencies in this metropolitan area?"

   Raymond Rowley, the Norfolk, ATF agent, initiated the ATF's search for
the source of Nicholas Elliot's gun.  He heard about the shooting on the news
and quickly volunteered his help to Detective Donald Adams, the Virginia
Beach homicide investigator.  Rowley ordered a trace.  The serial number was
relayed to Tom Strokes, the special agent in charge in Atlanta, who managed
after considerable effort to reach Sylvia Daniel by phone.  In a departure
from the usual frosty relations between her company and the ATF, Daniel
agreed to stop by her office on the way to her company Christmas party to
look up the serial number herself.
   The number led to a distributor, who in turn said he had shipped the
pistol to Guns Unlimited.  By eleven o'clock that evening Rowley, another
agent, and Adams were at Curtis Williams's door.
   As noted, Williams went to jail.  As far as federal law was concerned,
however, Guns Unlimited did nothing wrong when it sold the Cobray to Williams,
even under such obviously suspicious circumstances.  Williams had shown the
appropriate identification and had filled out Form 4473 properly, dutifully
writing "no" after every background question on the form.
   No one thought to investigate Guns Unlimited, not even after the suit
for negligence yielded a judgement against the company.
   "we're always looking for, and sensitive to, violations of federal law,
regardless of who may be the individual or entity involved," Rowley told me.
"In this case, no, we did not go back and reinvestigate.  Nothing that came
up during the investigation of Williams pointed to wrongdoing on the part of
Guns Unlimited.

-- 
Larry Cipriani, att!cbvox1!lvc or lvc@cbvox1.att.com