Posted: 6/24/2005 3:00:00 AM EDT
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www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/local/11962809.htm GUNS FOR SALE A boy's killing spotlights how a small number of Pennsylvania's gun dealers have become the main source of guns for criminals. By MYUNG OAK KIM & BARBARA LAKER [email protected] First in a two-part series THE GUN SHOP owner asked no questions when Perry Bruce walked into his store one day in August 1997. Jon K. Sauers, owner of Sauers Trading, in Williamsport, Pa., never did. He welcomed Bruce by name, recognizing him from the nine other guns he'd bought at Sauers Trading. In fact, Bruce had just bought another Saturday Night Special at the store a week earlier. Bruce pointed to a big .44-caliber Rossi revolver through a glass case. He showed Sauers a welfare ID and a license to carry a firearm and paid $200 for the weapon. Bruce later said he was stoned on drugs that day. And Sauers had already been told by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which polices the nation's gun dealers, that a gun Bruce had bought at Sauers Trading months earlier had been found at a crime scene. But none of the red flags were enough to stop Sauers from legally selling Bruce another gun. Bruce walked out with his purchase and sold the pistol later that day on the street for $400. That's what he always did, he said later in a court deposition, describing how he made his living: "dishwasher, laborer and selling handguns." Two years after Bruce put that .44-caliber revolver into circulation, the gun belonged to a South Philadelphia drug dealer who stashed it under a car on Sigel Street. That's where a 7-year-old boy found it, playfully pointed it at his friend and pulled the trigger. The bullet struck 7-year-old Nafis Jefferson in the head and killed him. The boy's killing spotlights how a small number of Pennsylvania's gun dealers - who are supposed to act as the industry's gatekeepers - have become the main source of guns for criminals. And it shows how neither gun laws nor the agency that is supposed to enforce them - the ATF - staunch the flow of weapons that cascade from legal gun shops to criminal gunslingers. Over and over, Sauers Trading has sold guns that cops eventually find at crime scenes - a signal, experts say, that the dealer could be violating ATF rules designed to keep guns from risky buyers. But even after Nafis was killed - and after Nafis' mom sued the gun shop for negligently selling guns to Bruce - the ATF did nothing to punish Sauers Trading. No license suspensions. No criminal charges. No fines. The gun shop remains open today. Gun dealers "are the main pipeline for crime guns, for criminals getting ahold of guns and for youth getting ahold of guns, and they know it," said David Kairys, a Temple University law professor who specializes in gun violence. "I can't call them corrupt if the law allows what they're doing. But it's immoral and I think anybody who makes excuses for it is just kidding themselves." Gun violence experts say the best way to stop the flow of guns is to force dealers to carefully screen buyers. But dealers have no incentive to refuse sales. "I've never heard of any gun shop that let civic responsibility get in the way of economic gain," said Bryan Miller, executive director of Ceasefire New Jersey, a group fighting gun violence. The gun dealer connection is especially critical in Philadelphia, which is awash with guns and plagued with daily shootings. this year, there have been 176 homicides - more than 80 percent of them by gun, police said. Philadelphia's gun homicide rate is one of the highest in the country. Most gun dealers never sell a gun that falls into criminal hands. But a small number of dealers have helped put Philadelphia on the map for having the biggest gun black market in the Northeast - attracting buyers from other states who find it easier to get illegal guns here. Less than 1 percent of the nation's gun shops sell nearly 60 percent of the guns recovered in crimes, according to ATF records. Of Pennsylvania's more than 3,000 licensed gun dealers, only 25 sold guns that were recovered in crimes between 1995 and 1997, ATF records show. Nine of those dealers are in Philadelphia. Seven more are in the nearby suburbs. Four local gun dealers are the kings of crime guns. Year after year, they top ATF's list of dealers that sell the most guns recovered in crimes. All four are thriving. None has been sanctioned by ATF, records show. Gun dealers are supposed to help law enforcement by keeping weapons out of the hands of criminals. When the ATF issues a retail gun dealer license, the agency instructs gun shop owners to notify law enforcement of any suspicious customer, to turn down a questionable sale and to keep careful records of gun transactions. But because of watered down laws and ATF's listless enforcement, there is little incentive for a gun dealer beyond their conscience to follow the ATF instructions. "Hear no evil, see no evil - that's their M.O.," said Elisa Barnes, a New York lawyer who is suing gun dealers and manufacturers on behalf of shooting victims. "ATF is a captive agency," she said. "They can't do any meaningful enforcement. An agency can't regulate if they really can't enforce. "If traffic cops can't hand out tickets, we'd all drive 90 miles an hour around central Philadelphia. The laws are written in such a way to ensure a dealer is never prosecuted." It's not entirely ATF's fault. The gun-friendly Congress and Bush administration have steadily cut ATF resources and authority. Entangled in the politics of guns that seems to have no middle ground, the ATF by law can no longer release information to the public about dealer inspections or crime gun traces. Even when ATF agents find dealers blatantly breaking laws, the agency can't simply yank the dealer's federal license to sell guns. To revoke a dealer's license, the ATF first must document the violations, warn the dealer, and then prove that the dealer continued to ignore the warnings. The dealer also can fight a pending license revocation in court - further delaying the process. At the ATF's Philadelphia office, 27 agents are responsible for policing 5,200 gun dealers, according to a July 2004 report by the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General. That's one agent for 193 dealers, which is about the national average, according to the report. In 2002, this thin force of ATF agents inspected fewer than one of every 20 dealers in the nation. If the agents continue at the same pace, it will take them 22 years to inspect every dealer. When they do inspect, agents usually find plenty of lawbreaking. ATF agents found violations at 40 percent of the dealers they inspected in 2002, the most recent period for which records are available. On average, the agents catch each lawbreaking dealer violating 70 to 80 laws - ranging from selling guns to minors to failing to keep sales records, according to the Inspector General. All that lawbreaking had little consequence. The agency's only real recourse against a corrupt dealer is to revoke the dealer's license. But revoking a license is so burdensome - the process takes years - that the ATF rarely even tries. In 2002, ATF revoked 30 gun dealer licenses. In 2003, the agency revoked 54 dealer licenses. There are more than 60,000 licensed dealers across the country. In Philadelphia, agents inspected 62 dealers in 2002 and found violations at 23, according to the Inspector General's report. The consequences? Two Philadelphia-area dealers got letters warning them not to break the law again. Three dealers had face-to-face meetings with ATF agents. Only one dealer - Bob's Gun Shop in Croydon, Bucks County - lost its ATF license in 2002. Bob's was snared in a criminal probe in which undercover ATF agents bought guns while posing as straw buyers for other people, convicted felons and out-of-state residents. John Hageman, spokesman for the ATF Philadelphia office, said the law prohibits him from releasing details about gun shop inspections. He said he could not comment on criticisms of ATF enforcement of gun dealers, except to say that his agency will investigate any report of violations and move to prosecute if warranted. The ATF's ability to enforce gun-sales laws is getting worse, mainly because of the nation's powerful pro-gun lobby, said John Lacey, of Americans for Gun Safety, a Washington, D.C., gun-control lobby that released a January 2004 report called "Selling Crime: High Crime Gun Stores Fuel Criminals." "Not only are these dealers investigated inadequately, but the federal laws designed to crack down on corrupt gun stores are almost never enforced, with a 25 percent reduction in prosecutions under the Bush administration," the report said. "In the rare cases when they are prosecuted, most receive a slap on the wrist or no punishment at all." Further, a law pending in Congress might give dealers an impenetrable cloak of immunity from lawsuits. When someone with a clean criminal record walks into a shop and wants to buy 10 (or 20 or 100) handguns, ATF instructions tell dealers to question the buyer and reject sales that appear suspicious. Still, selling dozens of guns to a suspicious person is perfectly legal as long as that person passes a criminal background check. Even if the same person keeps returning to buy more handguns, the dealer can still legally make the sale, no questions asked. ATF is supposed to investigate people who buy more than two guns in five business days. But that's just another responsibility for an already overburdened agency. And if an agent does call, the multiple-handgun buyer can get off the hook by saying he's a collector, or that his newly purchased guns were lost or stolen. Sauers Trading had ample reason to refuse sales to Perry Bruce, whose welfare status alone should have raised a question after he bought the first gun. "I never got asked questions from nobody," said Bruce in a court deposition for the lawsuit against the gun shop. "It was all about money. They had to know what I was doing." Bruce was later convicted of gun trafficking, and the ATF inspected Sauers, which has sold more than 50 guns that were recovered in crimes. Sauers was not punished. Reached by phone at his store, Jon Sauers declined to comment. Bruce, now 44, said in the deposition that he always was high on marijuana when he bought guns at Sauers Trading. He said Sauers often waited for his other customers to finish their business before he took care of Bruce. Once he bought his guns at Sauers, Bruce said he turned around and sold them - often to the same person and always on the same day. When he found out that little Nafis Jefferson had been killed by a gun he illegally sold, Bruce said he felt guilty and sorry for the family. Jon Sauers, on the other hand, defended his sales practices and said in his depositions that he had no reason to change. When asked if it's normal for one person to buy 10 handguns for protection purposes, Sauers said it was. The only person who hurt Sauers was the dead boy's mother. Tennille Jefferson filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Sauers and won an $850,000 settlement in the groundbreaking case last year. "Sauers had really little to fear from ATF," said Dennis Henigan, legal director at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which participated in the suit against the store. "He could sell gun after gun after gun to this trafficker and have little fear that ATF would come after him." Rather than being shut down or prosecuted, gun dealers usually end up helping federal agents nab gun traffickers. Gun dealers will make suspicious sales and then report the buyers to law enforcement. "ATF really does see the dealer as the good guy helping them to get the bad guy, when in fact, the dealer has the power to not sell the guns," said Henigan of the Brady Center. Law enforcement focuses on gun traffickers and the "end-user" - the person who shoots the gun. Federal prosecutors often rely on gun dealers to make their case. Gun control advocates criticize this approach, arguing that shutting down dirty dealers is the best way to get the most guns off the street. "If you just arrest the user, you're emptying the ocean with a bucket," said Joe Vince, who during his 28 year at ATF created the agency's crime gun analysis branch and served as chief of the firearms division. To many Americans, the right to own guns was established when the country was founded. Questioning gun ownership, they believe, is questioning freedom. But over the years, the right to bear arms has turned into a scourge for many of the country's large cities. Handguns have flooded major cities like Philadelphia. They have become status symbols and fashion accessories in youth hip-hop culture. And they have drenched city streets with blood, partly because of the streetcorner drug trade. While gun proponents insist that gun ownership makes people safer and that limiting guns infringes on their constitutional rights, others say guns are the greatest public health threat to cities, killing more people than AIDS and car wrecks. Compared to 10 years ago, gun sales are more strictly regulated and "kitchen table" dealers have largely been shut down. Dealers must be licensed, must pass background checks, and must operate their businesses in accordance with local zoning laws. Stricter laws and regulations have caused the number of licensed dealers to drop significantly, from about 250,000 to about 65,000 nationwide. Today, the number of licensed dealers in Philadelphia is one-eighth what it was in 1993. But the government's ability to police those dealers is weaker. The agency can no longer require dealers to conduct a physical inventory of their firearms. Unless they have a search warrant, agents can only inspect a dealer once a year. And dealer record-keeping violations were reduced from felonies to misdemeanors. Kelly Hobbs, an NRA spokeswoman, said the lobbying group believes law enforcement should focus on prosecuting criminals who shoot guns rather than dealers. "Why should a law abiding businessman, a firearms dealer who's conducting business in accordance with the law, be subject to unnecessary and unwarranted scrutiny by a government agency?" Hobbs asked. She added: "We support ATF and other law enforcement agencies and their investigations in any possible criminal wrongdoing." But gun control advocates say gun dealers need much stronger scrutiny. They say regulations clearly favor the rights of dealers to stay in business over the rights of shooting victims. "How do you say the right of this person to have a license trumps lives?" said Vince. "When there's no accountability or responsibility you have anarchy, and that's what we have." |