Whipped Cream Difficulties

(Part I. Part II.)

Before I jump into this, I’d like to link to Marko’s “Things You Don’t Want To Hear as a Gun Shop Clerk” post, just as a counterpoint to the WP‘s series.

It’s bad for business–never mind your own conscience–if one of your shop’s guns is used the next day for a mass killing.

That said, I didn’t talk yesterday about the sidebar on D&R Arms, “a no-frills shop tucked into a strip mall in Portsmouth”. Have you noticed how the WP likes to comment on the locations of the stores? Realco

occupies a 1930 Craftsman-style house on a strip of Marlboro Pike, between the Loose Ends Hair Studio and the Black Ribeye drive-through. Across the street is a Dunkin’ Donuts and a check-cashing service. Down the block is a liquor store and a police substation.

I’m not exactly clear on why being in a strip mall, or located near a Dunkin’ Donuts, is relevant. Is the WP trying to send some sort of coded message about demographics here? (And if the time I spent in the area of Rhode Island and Massachusetts is any guide, it’d be a small wonder if Realco wasn’t near a Dunkin’: there’s one approximately every 100 yards in that area.)

…no other dealer listed in state records has had so many guns move so quickly from counter to crime scene in recent years.

Such a pattern is a red flag for law enforcement officials looking for potential gun trafficking. That’s because the speed with which a new gun becomes police evidence can indicate criminal intent by the buyer at the time of the sale.

Since 2004, almost 70 percent of the guns traced back to the store were seized within a year, some within days or weeks, according to state records. The state rate is about 30 percent for the same time period.

That’s a pretty interesting stat, to be honest.

A “time to crime” of three years or less for a gun is a warning sign, according to researchers working with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Researchers who have studied long-term tracing trends say guns remain in circulation for decades, but newer weapons turn up disproportionately in crimes.

I’m curious about who these researchers are, and where the “three years” figure comes from. It makes sense to me that criminals are primarily (and illegally) purchasing newer guns, which would then turn up as “crime guns”, rather than using family heirlooms like Dad’s Registered Magnum or Grandfather’s pre-war, pre ’64 Model 70. It also makes sense that criminals, being a cowardly and superstitious lot, want those sexy guns they’ve seen in the movies, not vintage Smiths or Ruger Blackhawks. So I guess I’m unclear on the whole “newer weapons turn up disproportionately in crimes” thing; I’d expect the crime scene to be dominated by newer guns.

The big picture, according to interviews and records, is one of a store transformed in recent years for reasons unknown. During its first decade, the store rarely sold guns that turned up at crime scenes. But the number of guns sold there has tripled since 2004, and the number traced from crime scenes has grown sevenfold.

“Reasons unknown”. I like that. Demographics, maybe?

ATF inspectors, after finding virtually no problems in 2001, have warned the operators three times since then that their license is in jeopardy.

Interesting. Why has the ATF issued those warnings? What are the ATF’s concerns? I’m going to jump a little ahead here to answer that:

ATF inspectors documented no problems in D & R’s first 10 years. But a 2004 inspection uncovered numerous violations. The details are redacted from ATF records, but the problems were severe enough that the ATF held a “warning conference” with Taylor and his wife. Inspectors told them that if problems persisted, they would revoke the license. D & R’s response is unknown.

Since the details are redacted, we don’t know if those were technical violations, record keeping violations, or what. I suspect they were more than just technical violations of the postal abbreviation sort, but there’s no evidence one way or the other. It’s also interesting that this is the only “warning” out of the three specifically discussed in the article, and that warning was six years ago.

In recent years, the shop has sold guns to interstate traffickers in “straw purchases” who, when caught, told the ATF they were so obvious that store employees must have suspected something.

And we should believe the word of convicted federal felons who may very well have been looking to cut a deal because…?

” ‘Time to crime’ in and of itself is not something we can revoke a dealer on. It’s certainly something we look at,” said Special Agent Mike Campbell of the ATF’s Washington Field Division. “We’ve inspected them, and for the most part they are following the rules and regulations. We’ve met with them and instructed them on what they need to correct.”

…

The Post uncovered the surge in crime guns from the shop by analyzing a little-known database of seized weapons maintained by the Virginia State Police.

Okay, so it looks like there is a separate Virginia State Police database. Good to know.

By the end of last year, officers had recovered and traced more than 250 guns sold by D & R Arms, often in drug- and weapons-related crimes in Portsmouth

Sold over what period of time? “Records show the store has sold more than 8,900 guns since 1993.” If we assume that the WP is using the 1993 starting point for recoveries, that works out to about 2.8% of the sales. Don’t forget that “seized” may include recovered stolen guns. Also, there’s another key fact that may change those numbers; I’ll cover that in a moment.

Dominic Andre Wyche was arrested on drug-related charges while in the presence of guns from D & R in both 2005 and 2007, records show. A subsequent arrest landed him in prison for distributing cocaine. “They make me feel as if they want my business, unlike other gun stores in the area who just want my money,” Wyche wrote of why he patronized D & R.

Wow! Crooks don’t just like bargains, they also value customer service! Who’da thunk it? Note the phrasing of that statement, too:  “arrested on drug-related charges while in the presence of guns from D & R in both 2005 and 2007”. It doesn’t say he actually had possession of the guns, just that he was “in the presence” of guns from D&R. He could very well have been arrested for possession while hanging out with someone who legally purchased the guns from D&R. And there’s no mention of a gun at all with respect to the third arrest.

Another customer, Samuel Mason III, brandished a .45-caliber Taurus from D & R Arms in 2006 when he jumped onto a Portsmouth fast-food counter, pointed the gun at employees and demanded cash. Mason had bought the gun at D & R six months before.

Oh. My. God! They sold a gun to a known criminal!

When he bought the Taurus, Mason had only misdemeanors on his record and could legally purchase a gun. He told The Post that he got it for protection but that a desire for money led to the robbery, which landed him in prison.

Yeah. Not so much.

[Richard] Taylor [owner of D&R] briefly landed on the other side of the law in 1999 when a man filed a misdemeanor complaint that Taylor threatened to kill him. He “shot . . . a round at me, just missing me,” the victim claimed in court. Taylor completed a firearms safety course, and charges were dismissed.

Sounds bad, but that’s all the WP tells us. Taylor may very well have been in fear for his life, felt a shot was justified, and agreed to deferred adjudication on a misdemeanor charge just to be done with the whole affair. Or he could be a jerk. We don’t know; the WP doesn’t give us Taylor’s version of the incident.

Inspectors wrote that Dana Taylor told them the shop took steps “to avoid” a city ordinance that at the time required handgun buyers in Portsmouth to be fingerprinted and photographed by police, in addition to the state-run background check.

Yeah, it doesn’t make me real happy that they admitted to avoiding the city ordnance; I’d probably have moved out of the city if I was in their shoes, rather than deliberately avoiding compliance. On the other hand, I have serious questions about the legality and constitutionality of that ordinance. As we’ll see, that’s a moot point:

D & R Arms, inspectors noted, transferred “many handguns” up the road to dealers in Isle of Wight County. The shops handled the sales for the Taylors for a $25 fee.

A-ha. If they were transferring guns to other dealers, that’d tend to skew the sales figures, wouldn’t it? Depends on whether the “records” mentioned above count “transfers” as “sales” or not; the WP isn’t clear on that.

After a 2004 change in state law rendered the local ordinance moot, sales of handguns at D & R Arms climbed sharply, state records show, and traces climbed to new highs.

That’s significant, though the three-fold increase in sales doesn’t exactly explain the seven-fold increase in traces.

But. If the actual sales were going through other gun shops, as they were pre-2004, the seized guns and the corresponding traces would come back to those gun shops, not D&R, wouldn’t they? That’d tend to make D&R’s pre-2004 figures for seizures and traces lower. If you added the figures for D&R pre-2004, and the figures for the gun shops in Isle of Wight County that handled D&R’s transfer sales, would you get figures for traces and seizures that were lower in proportion to sales? Higher in proportion to sales? Or constant with respect to sales?

The Washington Post doesn’t tell us.

(I can see the argument that, without access to D&R’s records, the WP couldn’t have known which Isle of Wight dealers D&R did transfers to, and thus couldn’t have checked those dealers against the database. That’s possible, but I can see ways around that; adding up D&R’s figures, as well as the figures for all the dealers in Isle of Wight County, would give you a starting approximation, for example. A better approximation would add D&R’s figures to those for dealers in Isle of Wight County within a certain radius of D&R. I’m guessing D&R probably used dealers that were geographically close, unless the customer expressed a preference.)

About the same time, two felons from New York were recruiting people with clean records to buy handguns and assault rifles from D & R Arms and a handful of other Hampton Roads merchants. The buyers, including the elderly and indigent, were paid in crack or cash. Trafficked guns were sometimes resold the next day in New York City. When law enforcement busted up the ring in 2005, traffickers had secured at least 50 guns, 15 of them from D & R.

That’s also a significant bit of information; as I read it, it looks like D&R and some other dealers were specifically targeted by a ring engaging in straw purchases, which would also drive seizures and traces up.

The traffickers later told investigators that they were in and out of D & R Arms with so many different people that the sales staff must have suspected they were making straw purchases.

Yeah, again, we’re supposed to believe convicted felons. I’m also curious about D&R’s sales staff: is is mostly the Taylor’s who run the shop and handle the sales? Or do they have clerks, given that they seem to be a high-volume store? If they do have clerks, what’s the turnover? And how often was the New York ring coming in to purchase guns anyway?

The last few paragraphs of the WP piece describe a handful of incidents in which guns were seized. I don’t think there’s much of interest in those, except the makes and models described. In the article, we see specific mentions of:

• “an AK-47 and a shotgun”
• “A Hi-Point carbine”
• “a .45-caliber Taurus”
• “a .40-caliber Taurus”
• “a .38-caliber handgun” (make unspecified)
• “an AK-47”
• “a 9mm Taurus, a 9mm Jimenez and a .380 Cobra”

This strikes me as being pretty consistent with the “high-volume dealer selling lots of inexpensive guns to poor people” demographic that I see Realco fitting into. So does the WP have something against the poor engaging in self-defense?

(I expect that there will be a part 4 and a part 5 to this, but I also expect that those will not go up until tomorrow. My plan is to cover part 3 of the series and the second sidebar, and then cover the three chat sessions in another post.)