From: lvc@cbnews.cb.att.com (Larry Cipriani)
Subject: The Story of a Gun by Erik Larson, part 4 of 8 or so
Organization: Ideology Busters, Inc.
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 21:45:48 GMT
Keywords: atlantic, anti-gun propaganda


THE DEALER
   To be a gun dealer in America is to occupy a strange and dangerous out-
post on the moral frontier.  Every storefront gun dealer winds up at some
point in his career selling weapons to killers, drug addicts, psychos, and
felons; likewise, every storefront dealer can expect to be visited by ATF
agents and other lawmen tracing weapons backward from their use in crime
to their origins in the gun-distribution network.  One must be a cool cus-
tomer to stay in business knowing that the products one sells are likely to
be used to kill adults and children or to serve as a terroristic tool in
robberies, rapes, and violent assaults.  Yet gun dealers deny at every
step of the way the true nature of the products they sell and absolve
themselves of responsibility for their role in the resulting mayhem.  Guns
used in crime are commonly thought to have originated in some mythic inner-
city black market.  Such markets do exist, of course, but they are kept
well supplied by the licensed gun-distribution network, where responsibility
is defined as whatever the law allows.
   Guns Unlimited demonstrates the kind of position every legitimate gun
shop must eventually find itself in.  Guns Unlimited considers itself a
"good" dealer.  Indeed, in the view of Mike Dick, the general manager of
the company and the son of its founder, Guns Unlimited is not just a sterling
corporate citizen but also a de facto deputy of the ATF and a vital bulwark
in the fight against crime and civil-rights abuse.
Nonetheless, Guns Unlimited sold Nicholas Elliot a gun under circumstances
that led, early last year, to a jury verdict against the dealer in a civil
suit, brought by the husband of the slain teacher, which charged the dealer
with negligence.
   Federal law bars anyone under twenty-one from buying a handgun, but
Nicholas acquired his with ease through a "straw-man" purchase three months
before the shootings, when he was fifteen years old.  Straw-man purchases,
in which a qualified buyer buys a handgun for an unqualified person, are
the primary means by which America's bad guys acquire their weapons, and
one the ATF cannot hope to put an end to, given the implicit and explicit
restraints on its law-enforcement activities.
   One peaceful September weekend Nicholas Elliot, apparently at loose ends,
asked his second cousin, Curtis Williams, a truck driver in his thirties, to
take him to look at guns in a gun store.  Nicholas had pestered Williams
before, calling "all the time," as Williams remembered it.  Williams didn't
want to go - he was busy stripping wax off a floor in his home and wanted to
finish the job that day - but he felt guilty.  Williams decided that he could
be back in plenty of time to finish stripping the floor.  He suggested Bob's
Guns, a few minutes away.
   When he arrived at Nicholas' house, however, he learned that the boy had
other ideas.  He didn't want to visit just any gun store, according to
William's cour testimony.  He wanted to go to Guns Unlimited, in Carrollton.
Williams didn't know the store, but he did know Carrollton.  It was little
more than a wide space on Route 17 in Isle of Wight County, a rural wedge
of land bordered on the north by the James River and on the east by the
Portsmouth-Norfolk metropolitan area.  It was a long drive from Nicholas'
house, on Colon Avenue in Norfolk's Campostella neighborhood: a round
trip of ninety minutes minimum, and that was just travel time.  Williams
told Nicholas he didn't have enough gas for the trip.  Nicholas passed him
$20.
   On the way the boy talked about a gun he'd come to appreciate, the
Cobray M-11/9 made by S.W.Daniel.  "Man," Williams recalled Nicholas saying,
"you've got to see that; it's a nice gun."
   The easy, fluid commerce of guns embraced them the moment they entered
the shop.  An elderly couple browsing in the store approached almost im-
mediately and offered to sell Williams a gun in a private sale.  "My husband
has plenty of guns," the man's wife said.  "He'll sell you a gun, if you
want to buy one."  Williams declined.
   With the help of Tony Massengill, a firefighter and former policeman now
moonlighting as a gun salesman, Williams and Nicholas looked at the numerous
guns, Nicholas acting more and more like an earnest shopper, not some kid
infatuated with guns.  Soon, Williams testified, Nicholas was asking to
see particular guns and peppering Massengill with detailed questions about
muzzle velocity and comparative power.  When Nicholas asked to see the
Cobray, Massengill obliged.  "They got in such a lengthy conversation about
that," Williams recalled, "I just kind of moved away from them a little
bit, looking around on my own."
   Williams returned, and he and Nicholas browsed until they reached the
far end of the store, where Nicholas peeled off $300 and gave the money,
from his savings, to Williams, instructing him to buy the Cobray.  This did
not surprise Williams.  He knew a lot of adults who had bought guns for
their kids; he knew a lot of kids who had guns.
   The store was larger then, and configured a bit differently from the way
it is now, but it was still small enough that anyone watching would have
been aware of the exchange.  What Massengill did see, however, became a
matter of debate.  He claimed he did not remember the sale at all, although,
curiously, another employee, present in the store at the time but not ac-
tually involved in the transaction, testified later that he remembered seeing
the buyers in the store.  This clerk, Christopher Hartwig, also testified
that he and Massengill had discussed the purchase after the shootings.
   Williams testified in court that when the money changed hands, Massengill
was still behind the counter at the place where he had last talked with
Nicholas, some eight or nine feet away.  "He was still standing there, waiting
to wait on us, looking at us."
   Nicholas and Williams returned to the counter to buy the Cobray.
Massengill passed Williams a copy of Form 4473.  Everyone who buys a gun
from a federally licensed firearms dealer must fill out this two-page form,
which, among other things, asks the would-be purchaser if he is a drug addict,
is a convicted felon, is mentally ill, or is an illegal alien; if he has re-
nounced his U.S. citizenship; whether he has been dishonorably discharged
from the armed forces.  The form goes nowhere.  It is kept in the dealer's
files (provided the dealer in fact keeps such files, and keeps them
accurately) for later reference should the gun be used in a crime and traced
by the ATF.  By federal law, the buyer need present only enough identification
to prove that he is twenty-one or older and resides in the state in which
the dealer is located.  (State and local laws may add requirements.)
   Williams testified that as he began filling out the form, Massengill told
him, "The only thing that will keep you from buying this gun here in this
store is you put a 'yes' answer to these questions.  Everything should be
marked no.  If you put a yes up there, that will stop you from getting the
gun."  Williams completed the form and concluded the purchase.
   Nicholas, meanwhile, had taken the gun from the counter and begun looking
it over.  He left the store carrying the gun.
   Immediately after the Atlantic Shores shootings ATF agents arrested
Williams and charged him with making a straw-man purchase.  He was tried
promptly and served thirteen months in prison.  During the trial the federal
prosecutor asked him, "What would ever possess someone who's thirty-sex,
thirty-seven, years old to arrange for a fifteen-year-old young man to get
a weapon like that?"
   What no federal authority ever bothered to ask, however, is what would
possess Guns Unlimited to allow this sale to be made, given the apparent
level of Nicholas' involvement.

-- 
Larry Cipriani, att!cbvox1!lvc or lvc@cbvox1.att.com
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns