Whipped Cream Difficulties

Onward and upward, then. The entire WP “Hidden Life of Guns” series, including the various multimedia presentations and chats, is linked here.

Part II of the series focuses on Virginia. Of the first three antidotes in the story, at least two reflect illegal “straw man” sales to prohibited purchasers. But the article goes on:

…60 percent of the 6,800 guns sold in Virginia in that time and later seized by police can be traced to just 40 dealers.

and

The 40 dealers account for about 30 percent of the state’s gun sales, but their guns make up almost two-thirds of those seized and reported to State Police.

The Realco argument again:

“We are aware of the dealers that have higher numbers of traces,” Special Agent Mike Campbell of the ATF’s Washington Field Division said of The Post’s findings. “It is one of the factors that causes us to take a closer look. . . . If they are following the law and our inspections find their paperwork is in order, that’s a lot of traces, but there’s not a whole lot we can do.”

Let’s talk a little about tracing data:

Gun tracing is such a politically sensitive issue that Congress in 2003 banned the release of any federal data connecting dealers to guns seized in crimes.

Sounds bad, right? Actually, tracing data is still available to law enforcement. What Congress really did is to bar the release of tracing data to people outside of law enforcement, such as cities suing gun makers, anti-gun organizations, and the news media.

The FY 2007 version of the Tiahrt amendment ensures that trace data is available to federal, state, and local agencies “in connection with and for use in a bona fide criminal investigation or prosecution” or for use in administrative actions by BATFE…

You wouldn’t know this from the WP article, but both BATFE and the Fraternal Order of Police support keeping the trace data confidential, since it may contain information that endangers ongoing investigations.

The Post identified the Virginia dealers by using public information requests to obtain copies of a little-known state database of seized firearms.

I’m unclear as to which database this is: the previously referenced Maryland database, or a separate Virginia database? From context, I think it is the latter.

This is a point that I should have made in part one, and didn’t: there are a lot of reasons why guns might wind up in the Maryland or Virginia databases. They might have been seized in a crime. They might have been recovered stolen property. They might have been turned in by widows who don’t know what to do with their late husband’s guns. I’m not familiar with Maryland or Virginia gun laws: could this database include guns registered in those states? Do the Maryland or Virginia State Police departments run BATFE traces on guns registered in those states, just to make sure that the guns aren’t stolen or illegally aquired? Point being, just because a gun shows up in the database, or is traced, doesn’t mean it is involved in a crime. (The NRA-ILA “Tiahart Amendment” fact sheet includes a claim that “The BATFE trace request form lists ‘crime codes’ for traffic offenses and election law violations, among many others.” This is a place where I’d like to see a citation.)

Moving along,

Scattered across the state, the 40 dealers linked to the most crime guns have sold more than 800,000 new and used guns since 1998. Four of the 40 are in Northern Virginia, but one of those is now closed.

Local police have swept up guns from the top 40 in a sprawl of investigations: 40 homicide cases, 63 robberies, 96 suicides or attempts, 173 brandishings, 301 shootings with or without injuries, 655 drug probes and 1,043 weapons-related violations.

A-ha! A statistic! Let’s run those numbers: homicide guns account for 0.005%, robbery guns account for 0.007875%, suicide/attempted suicide guns 0.012%, “brandishing” for 0.021625%, shooting guns for 0.037625%, “drug probe” guns for 0.081875%, and “weapons-related violations” for 0.130375%. Added up, the guns mentioned above work out to 2,371 out of 800,000, or about 0.296375% of the total. This is assuming that there’s no overlap; that is, that no guns show up in both the “homicide” and “suicide” categories, for example. Nor does the WP break this out and tell us how many of those homicides, shootings, and brandishings were ultimately ruled justified for defensive reasons. And I have to wonder if “drug probe” includes guys caught with a dime bag of weed and a Glock? Not that I condone that, but there’s a big difference between casual marijuana users caught with guns and guys moving kilos of coke with guns.

(Edited to add: looking over this again, there’s something else I noticed. Assuming that the figures given for the guns seized by police are also since 1998, that’s an average of one homicide gun, 1.575 robbery guns, 2.4 suicide guns, 4.325 brandishing guns, 7.525 shooting guns, 15 “drug probe” guns, and 26.075 “weapons violations” guns, per shop, in a 12 year period. That seems pretty low to me, even before you start asking some of the other questions I asked above. How does this compare with gun shops that aren’t in the top 40?)

ATF inspectors have found regulatory violations at most of the 40 dealers dating to the early 1990s. Infractions ranged from minor paperwork errors to sales to people prohibited by law from buying guns. All but eight merchants have been warned by the government – 73 times combined – that continued violations jeopardized their gun licenses. Four stores have had their licenses revoked, but all are still able to legally sell guns today at the same locations after transferring licenses, re-applying or re-licensing under new operators.

A-ha! So the ATF does have enforcement power! They can revoke people’s licenses!

(Let me add here that “technical violations” may include such things as writing “TX” instead of “Texas”, or “Apt.” instead of “Apartment”, on the Form 4473 you fill out when you buy a gun. Really, I’m not making this up; there was a rash of BATFE-issued violations for exactly those reasons a couple of years back, and the gun stores I went to were very careful to warn you “Don’t abbreviate anything.” BATFE has apparently issued a clarification stating that recognized postal abbreviations are okay.)

Revocations of licenses are infrequent, averaging 110 a year across the nation out of about 60,000 licensed dealers. Federal prosecutions of dealers are even rarer, averaging about 15 a year nationally, including three over the past nine years in Virginia, records show.

What’s your takeaway from this; that the vast majority of gun dealers obey the law, and don’t want to jeopardize their businesses? Or that BATFE doesn’t have sufficient enforcement power?

When the ATF does step up enforcement, it can lead to political pressure on the agency to ease off….When ATF agents tried to track buyers they suspected of straw purchases at Richmond-area gun shows, the operators complained to the National Rifle Association. Top ATF officials were called before Congress and asked to explain themselves.

Uh, yeah. The WP article omits some significant facts here. The ATF didn’t just try to track buyers suspected of straw purchases:

• They were going to people’s homes and asking family members and neighbors if they knew someone was purchasing a gun.
• They were stopping people with no probable cause, confiscating guns, and handing them letters stating they were suspected of violating Federal law.
• They were confiscating Form 4473s from dealers with no connection to a specific criminal investigation, which is a violation of the law.
• They detained several people who were legally selling firearms in private sales.

In short, BATF acted like a bunch of jackbooted thugs, and got their hands slapped. It amazes me that every other Federal and state law enforcement agency is the target of skeptical investigation and criticism by the news media. But BATFE? They apparently can do no wrong. When’s the last time you read a critical investigative article on that agency?

Five of these 40 Virginia merchants were sued in civil court in 2006 by New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who investigated them after 137 guns they sold were linked to crimes in New York. The suits included evidence from videotaped stings to see if merchants sold guns to simulated straw buyers.

Removing the WP spin from this (“simulated straw buyers”?) Bloomberg sent a bunch of people out, had them pretend to commit crimes, then tried to blame the gun dealers for these pretend crimes. At least two of those gun dealers sued Bloomberg, and the state of Virginia made Bloomberg’s sting operations a felony. (I’m not sure those operations weren’t illegal already.)

The WP goes on to talk about one gun dealer in the top 40 who went out of business:

Richard Norad, who sold thousands of guns a year as R and B Guns out of his Hampton home in the 1990s, pleaded guilty in 2001 to a felony for failing to obtain the required second piece of identification from a gun buyer. At least 1,400 of Norad’s guns have been traced. In 2007, a man armed with one killed a New York City police officer, according to news reports.

Shawn Pettaway, a convicted trafficker now in prison in New York, was part of a ring that targeted Hampton Roads dealers, including R and B, in a scheme that police said ran more than 100 guns to the Bronx in the early 2000s. He told The Post he would scope out the gun shops and recruit female buyers so he could circumvent the state’s one-a-month limit on handgun purchases.

Again, illegal straw man sales. What do you suppose would happen if local law enforcement went after straw purchasers, especially women?

“Thinking about buying a gun for your man? Why doesn’t he buy his own gun? If he’s a felon and you’re caught purchasing a gun for him, here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to go to jail for ten years. We’ll make sure to pursue the maximum sentence on your ass. Do you love your kids? Kiss them goodbye, because once you’re sentenced, we’re going to petition the court to remove your parental rights. They’re going to become wards of the state and you’ll never see them again. So think before you sign that form 4473, honeybunch.”

The fact that a store sold guns later used in crimes does not necessarily mean the dealer did anything wrong or illegal. Catching dealers that break the law is not as simple as adding up traces, experts caution. The type and numbers of guns sold, a store’s location, its clientele, how it screens buyers, and even police tracing practices all affect the numbers.

The WP keeps saying things like this, but the whole point of the series seems to be to undermine those statements.

“Some dealers are just bad-guy magnets,” said Garen Wintemute, who heads up the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California at Davis and studies tracing. “They are more likely to sell inexpensive handguns, to be pawnbrokers, to be located in urban areas, and to be patronized by would-be gun buyers who . . . are prohibited from owning guns.

This sort of seems to be Lawrence’s demographic argument about Realco, but the point about “inexpensive guns” is well taken.

Ron Hess has sold guns for decades from his store in Norfolk, moving about 900 a year. The shop is also one of the top 40. In 2008, police traced at least 72 firearms back to his counters.

Hess said suspicious customers get the boot. Like many dealers, he complained that not all traced guns are “crime guns,” the term used by the ATF. Hess questioned why a gun stolen from a customer, then found and traced, is a crime gun. “That really [ticks] me off,” Hess said. “It’s a ‘lost, stolen’ gun.”

The ATF defines crime gun as one used or suspected to have been used in a crime or illegally possessed. Even “found” guns are likely crime guns, said Charles Houser, who runs the ATF’s National Tracing Center in West Virginia, because lawful owners don’t abandon guns. “A reasonable person would argue that a crime probably has been committed,” he said. “We just don’t know which one yet.”

Good to see the WP make the point that recovered stolen guns can also be “crime guns” or “trace guns”. Even if they did make that point near the bottom of their second day article. In a disused lavatory. With a sign on the door that said “Beware of the leopard.”

The agency’s strategy has been to partner with dealers and the National Shooting Sports Foundation in the “Don’t Lie for the Other Guy” campaign to help identify straw-purchase attempts. But the ATF’s reach is limited. It can’t force dealers to screen customers beyond the background check, to inventory stock so guns do not go missing, or to install security measures to thwart burglaries.

“The dealers have a choice: they can do the bare minimum, or they can do more,” said Campbell, the ATF agent.

“They can do the bare minimum, or they can do more.” In other news, the first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club. (See also: 37 pieces of flair.)

Some dealers say they curb or limit the sales of inexpensive handguns, such as those made by Hi-Point Firearms.

All right! The dreaded Hi-Point rears its ugly head!

ATF officials say that years of tracing has shown that low-priced handguns have greater appeal to violent criminals and gun traffickers.

Wow! You don’t say! Criminals, a cowardly and superstitious lot, also like a bargain!

No other dealer in state records is listed as the source of as many traced Hi-Point pistols as Sonny’s, a Portsmouth pawnshop down the street from a neighborhood where a fast-growing drug gang made headlines last year.

Sonny’s has sold more than 5,000 guns in the past 12 years. Of those, at least 230 were later traced – more than 140 of them Hi-Points.

Sounds like a high-volume dealer selling a lot of cheap guns in an area where people probably couldn’t afford better ones.

The ATF moved to revoke the shop’s license in 2004, citing chronic violations. As the process played out, different operators secured a new ATF license, keeping the doors open and changing the name on the license from Sonny’s Coins and Hobbies to Sonny’s Pawn Shop. Gun traces, including ones involving Hi-Point handguns, have continued.

But the WP doesn’t mention if violations have continued, or if the number of traces has increased, decreased, or remained constant after Sonny’s ATF license changed. I’ll confess that it bugs me a little that Sonny’s was able to remain open in the face of chronic violations, but the WP doesn’t detail what the relationship is between the old and new owners, either. Did the new owners just keep the name? Are the old owners actively involved in the business? Again, has the history of violations continued?

Likewise, the Norman Gladden story that ends part two bothers me a little bit.

In 2006, ATF inspectors found that guns were missing and records were in disarray. An inspection the year before at Gladden’s shop in Hampton also uncovered problems, including 13 “straw purchasers, and suspicious purchasers,” records show. The ATF warned Gladden that his licenses were in jeopardy.

…

But straw buyers frequented his counters, court records show, securing 15 guns from 2004 to 2007 that led to trafficking prosecutions.

…

One of Gladden’s own employees was peddling A & P guns on the side. The employee sold, traded or gave away 59 guns worth $70,000. Gladden discovered and reported the theft to the ATF in 2007. When ATF inspectors returned to the Virginia Beach shop to re-inspect, they documented 240 missing guns and repeat violations. They revoked his store’s license.

Gladden simply transferred another license he held from his residence on the Eastern Shore to the Virginia Beach storefront, records show. Since then, the shop has sold thousands of guns.

But, again, are there ongoing, continuing, violations? The WP doesn’t tell us.

In response to questions, an attorney for Gladden said The Post’s information contained “factual inaccuracies, half-truths, dated information, unsubstantiated allegations by convicted felons and hearsay.”

I particularly like the “unsubstantiated allegations by convicted felons” part. That’s an interesting question; how many convicted felons get deals on their gun possession charges, in return for rolling over on the dealers who sold the guns? And how credible is their testimony?

I’m hoping to get to part 3 of the series and the related material tomorrow.

I wasn’t going to comment on the WP gun series. I was hoping one of the other gun bloggers would comment on it, and I could just link to it. Frankly, I didn’t feel a need to pressure test my cerebral arteries during my down time; I do enough of that at work. But someone who shall remain nameless issued a challenge to me, and then decided to comment on said series himself and followup on that comment here.

So let’s take a look at part one of the series, shall we? It starts off with a sad story about Erik Kenneth Dixon, a convicted felon who “snapped”, shot his sister in the leg, and killed her boyfriend. Where did he get the gun? His girlfriend bought it for him, from a gun shop called Realco. You know what we call that? A “straw man” purchase, punishable by up to 10 years in prison. You know what happened to the girlfriend who illegally bought the gun for the convicted felon? She “cooperated with prosecutors, who chose not to charge her”. As a matter of fact, the girlfriend called the Maryland State Police nine days before the shooting and told them what she had done; the MSP opened an investigation the same day, but didn’t arrest Dixon until after the shooting.

The WP goes on to observe that the Glock in question was “one of 86 guns sold by Realco that have been linked to homicide cases during the past 18 years”. In that 18 year period, “police have recovered more than 2,500 guns sold by the shop, including over 300 used in non-fatal shootings, assaults and robberies”. When you cite numbers like that, the first question I have is; what percentage of the total sales is that? If Realco is a high volume dealer, is that an unusually high percentage of their volume? How does that compare to other gun shops? And why did the WP pick an 18 year period, anyway? Did they only have access to data going back that far?

The (partial) answer to the percentage question is buried further down in the article.

Realco is listed in the Maryland database as selling 19,000 guns since 1984. Of every 1,000 sold, analysis shows, police later recovered 131.

About five miles away from Realco, near Andrews Air Force Base, is Maryland Small Arms Range Inc. The longtime dealer has sold about 15,000 guns over the past 25 years. For every 1,000 it sold, police later recovered 41.

So that’s about 13% for Realco, and 4% for Maryland Small Arms. Good to know, but that’s just recovered crime guns in the Maryland database (more on that in a bit). Another question: when the WP talks about those 86 guns linked to homicide cases, how many of those homicide cases involved use of the guns in question in self-defense? The WP cites three other homicide cases (which appear to be non-self-defense, from their description, but I haven’t searched the archives yet to confirm this)  involving Realco guns, but doesn’t give us that detail.

Coming back to the main theme of the article, “The Post investigation found that a small percentage of gun stores sells most of the weapons recovered by police in crimes”. Sounds bad, right?

For the most part, these sales are legal, but an unknown number involve persons who buy for those who cannot, including convicted felons such as Dixon, in a process known as a “straw purchase.” Such sales are illegal for the buyer and the store, if it knowingly allows a straw purchase.

So most of the sales are legal, but some are illegal, but the gun stores don’t know about the straw purchases, so it isn’t their fault? Have I got that right? I think so. A recurring theme in part I of the WP article is that Realco and other dealers are scrupulously following the law:

State and federal regulators have documented only minor problems in numerous inspections.

but

“The owners of Realco Guns are cooperative with our detectives and have been compliant with all reporting requirements,” said Maj. Andy Ellis, commander of the public affairs division for Prince George’s police. “It shows a weakness in our system when a company like Realco can adhere to the law yet still be the source of so many crime guns. I can only imagine how much lower our violent-crime rate would be if Realco sold shoes instead of guns.”

In other words, they follow the law, yet, they’re a problem. I can only imagine how much lower Prince George’s violent crime rate would be if the police and prosecutors aggressively prosecuted felons and straw purchasers, Major Ellis, instead of shooting dogs. Or covering up misconduct by their fellow officers.

Let’s go on.

Most experts and ATF officials agree that the number of conscientious dealers far outweighs the minority that break the law. Straw schemes can be hard to detect. A gun traced to a merchant does not necessarily signal that the merchant did anything wrong, the experts say. The number of traces a store generates is shaped by many factors, including the type and number of guns sold, geography, clientele and how clerks vet customers.

What about that database?

To track crime guns in the District and Prince George’s, The Post used public information requests to obtain local police logs listing 76,000 guns recovered by police in the two jurisdictions, then matched the serial numbers against a Maryland database of gun sales.

About 9,400 had no serial numbers and could not be matched. Another 13,300 were rifles or shotguns, which the state does not track. About 44,000 guns were not listed in state sales records, meaning the weapons were probably sold by dealers scattered across the country or had their serial numbers entered into police logs incorrectly.

About 8,700 guns were tracked to the Maryland merchants that last sold them.

I find it interesting that Maryland has a database of gun sales. But let’s look at those numbers: out of the total 76,000 guns that the WP ran in their database search, they were able to track “about 8,700” to dealers in Maryland, or roughly 11% of the total recovered guns.

The WP continues to hammer on Realco: “Realco’s firearms end up at local crime scenes at a rate nearly twice that of any other active Maryland dealer that had 10 or more guns seized.” But, again, is Realco breaking the law?

Asked about Realco, ATF spokeswoman Clare Weber said stores with greater numbers of traces are inspected more frequently.

“The number of traces that come back to a [gun dealer] is not a revocable offense if the dealer is found in compliance with record-keeping requirements,” she said.

Signs point to “No”.

…Maryland State Police officials told The Post they were “taking an aggressive look” at Realco and potential straw purchases. Nothing came of the investigation, records show.

…

Realco was back in the news in August 2007 when D.C. police issued a report that identified the leading sources of crime guns seized in D.C. in 2006 – Realco was No. 1 with 76, three times the number of the next-most-frequent dealer.

That month, prosecutor Ivey joined Jesse L. Jackson’s Rainbow/Push Coalition and others outside Realco in a “protest against illegal guns.” Inside the shop, Maryland State Police pored over Realco’s paperwork. Investigators found little of concern.

Signs still pointing to “No” here.

Joseph R. Vince Jr., who retired from the ATF’s Crime Gun Analysis Branch in 1999 and has worked as an expert for lawyers who represent victims of gun violence,

“lawyers who represent victims of gun violence”? That raises questions in my mind right away.

said the pattern prompts questions.

“If a gun store is bleeding crime guns, you have got to ask yourself what . . . is going on,” Vince said. “I have no problem with somebody being in the firearms business. That is a legitimate business. But why can’t the public be aware of where guns to criminals are coming from?”

“I have no problem with somebody being in the alcohol business. That is a legitimate business. But why can’t the public be aware of where liquor sales to to drunk drivers are coming from?”

“I have no problem with somebody being in the used car business. That is a legitimate business. But why can’t the public be aware of where car sales to repeat traffic offenders are coming from?”

If gun dealers are knowingly and illegally selling guns to criminals, the BATF has the tools to stop those sales. So far, the WP has failed to establish that this is taking place, especially in the case of Realco, or that the tools the BATF has are not up to the task.

I liked something a commenter at Sebastian’s blog said:

So basically you’ve spent the last year putting together an investigative series demonstrating that Realco operates in an area where the local citizenry goes out of its way to circumvent or outright subvert the law. You are then shocked and amazed that people willing to break the law to purchase a weapon that they are legally barred from owning further break the law by using the weapon to murder, maim, or intimidate (which, I believe are also illegal).

Good work folks!

Coming up as time permits, I’m planning to do posts on part 2, part 3, and the online discussions related to this series. I will say that I skimmed over today’s online discussion, and former agent Jim Cavanaugh came across as a surprisingly reasonable and moderate voice.