Posted: 9/18/2007 3:54:04 AM EDT
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I posted this in the GD, but I thought it needed to be posted in the hometown forum as well. From the Virginia Gazette in Williamsburg, Virginia They sell machine guns, quietly Cortney Langley September 15, 2007 YORK - The Christys can make machine guns feel like home. George and Laurie Christy operate a small unmarked gun shop in a quiet subdivision on Mooretown Road. New customers regularly circle the neighborhood two or three times searching for the nondescript shack beside their home. If anything gives G&L Arms away, it may be the trucks and police-style Impalas in the driveway on any given day. George, 59, will have lived in the house for 50 years come November. He began selling arms in the early- to mid-'70s, primarily to law enforcement. He doesn't advertise because he doesn't have to. An investigator in Brunswick County, near the North Carolina border, knows who he is. So does a 28-year-veteran of the Virginia State Police, as does a retired lieutenant colonel who's running for sheriff in Surry County. Although the locals may not know them, the Christys have attained a certain fame within the machine gun subculture. George has been featured on the cover of the trade magazine Machine Gun News. Known within those circles as "Little Fat Guy," he's also renowned for inventing an automatic belt loader. He still receives requests a decade later. Their brushes with the media have been dubious. In 1999 two New York writers from GQ magazine interviewed the couple at a military gun show in Kentucky. The article began, "Freaks. I'm surrounded by freaks." More often, though, George says, people are surprised to find they are so normal. The Christys admit that what they do is unusual. Many people find it hard to believe that machine guns can be owned legally. Who buys them? "A lot of individuals buy machine guns," George said. "You look over to the left of you, there's a federal court judge. And to the right is a school groundskeeper." The customers need enough disposable income since the cheapest gun runs about $6,000. "Anything worth owning," George said, will cost at least $15,000. It can cost up to about $40,000 for a nice weapon. Most of the Christys' clientele are law enforcement. They sell perhaps 100 new machine guns to officers annually, and at a discount. Military customers also get a break. But it is the pure collector who is perhaps the best market. In 1986 legislation restricted the civilian purchase of machine guns to those that were already registered. So only machine guns registered during 1934-86 qualified. The first person in the registry was Al Capone. As a result, every year the antique guns become more valuable. George's sales of 25 a year are extremely lucrative. "You are basically buying the serial number," he said. Still, the country does not seem in entirely short supply of legally owned machine guns. On any given day, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms reviews 7,000 transfers, George said. Although the ATF protects the exact number of the arms legally owned in the country, 1 million is the believed number. Many people, especially the affluent, don't advertise their collections, he said, and some are downright secretive. He won't name names, but hints that some buyers may be prominent in the community. "Some people aren't comfortable buying during regular business hours, so we work differently with them," George said. "We won't open at 4 a.m. when you need hunting ammo, though," Laurie added. While legal to own, the requirements to buy a machine gun are much more stringent than for buying other types of firearms, limiting who buys them. Paperwork is filled out in duplicate. The applicant is fingerprinted, and local sheriffs have to sign off that they have no reason to suspect that the applicant will use the weapon for crime. The paperwork is forwarded to ATF for a 90-day background check by the Justice Department. The Christys don't begrudge the waiting period. Indeed, they promote the safety record of legally owned machine guns. "Legally owned machine guns have a safer record than bathtubs," George said. "More people are injured and killed with golf balls than with legally owned machine guns. That's straight from the ATF." That's an important distinction, legally owned. It is the type of weapon George and Laurie traffic in. They aren't much interested in talking about the other kind. "You're not going to pay $30,000 for a machine gun and rob a 7-Eleven for $127," George said. The same type of federal regulation that buyers must go through also extends to sellers, whose books and paperwork are examined annually by the ATF. One agent sat at the counter for six hours straight one year, never needing food, water or using the bathroom. "I've never had a single issue with the ATF," George said proudly. One time he accidentally sold a military-issue M-16 to a customer seeking a civilian-version AR-15. "I chased that guy down," George said. "But I called the ATF immediately." While the machine guns are the big-ticket items, George and Laurie have noticed a huge increase in women buying handguns for personal protection. Laurie usually handles those sales to make the women more comfortable. But Laurie is no joke handling a machine gun. "It's all his fault," she says, pointing at George. Now, her favorite gun is the 9mm Heckler & Koch MP5. "She can write her name literally on a berm with it," George bragged. Laurie was rated the third best woman shooter in the nation in 1991. She said that the first time a man shoots a machine gun, he puts it up to his shoulder and gives it a meek little burst. "Women hip it and hang on until the magazine is empty," she said. "But they are both smiling." The couple have two children, a 26-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter. On any day in the shop, at least two members of their extended family are there, like fixtures. Steven Dies and Tom Gemzala seem to be at the shop just about every day. Two dachshunds have run of the shop. Gemzala, a retired U.S. Airways pilot, said that when he was sick and had a long recovery, his wife began dropping him off at the shop "so George would babysit." Gemzala is a handgun man. He can shoot a golf ball hanging from fishing line from 25 yards. They lost their challenge, he said, so he moved to target practice on empty shells. "It's relaxing here," he said. More than for George and Laurie, for Gemzala, G&L stands for "guns and laughter." |