cuchulainn
October 6, 2003, 12:21 AM
from The Post Standard (Syracuse)
http://www.syracuse.com/news/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/news-12/1065343088173823.xml157 shops, dealers sell guns in CNY
October 05, 2003
By Sue Weibezahl and Jennifer Jacobs
Staff writers
In the 90 minutes it takes to drive across Central New York, people looking to legally buy a gun could do so at 157 locations
They could buy a gun in a lumberyard, a day care center, a clothing shop, at a convenience store. Or they could sit down at a kitchen table inside a home that looks more like grandma's house than a gun shop - complete with picket fence, nearby church and a locked gun cabinet.
These gun businesses come in all sizes and names: Guns R Us, Greg's Gun Room, Wal-Mart, Jack's Welding Repair and Hannibal Quick Mart. But only those with the interest and the Internet would likely find most of them. In seeking out more than four dozen dealers last week, The Post-Standard found only three with signs advertising guns for sale.
These federally licensed, legal dealers say they 0
operate in relative secrecy not because they are doing anything wrong, but because they don't want to publicize the location of a cache of weapons.
And because they know for some there's a stigma that surrounds guns - particularly in light of two recent thefts from local gun dealers and last year's release of "Bowling for Columbine," a controversial documentary on the gun culture in the United States and the fact that 11,000 Americans die each year as a result of gun violence.
Onondaga, Cayuga, Madison and Oswego counties have an average of one gun dealer for every 4,663 residents. Across the country, the number is one dealer for every 4,895. Statewide, the ratio is one dealer for every 8,677 citizens, according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Some anti-gun folks believe that all firearms should be prohibited and worry that proposed legislation easing some restrictions could increase the number of small-time dealers.
"Just knowing how many guns are out there makes me very, very alarmed," said Preston Fagan, president of the Syracuse-Onondaga NAACP. The national organization recently sued gun manufacturers, trying to curb violence.
Fagan said he favors stricter regulations for people who both buy and sell firearms.
"I'm not for putting anyone out of business, but these dealers should be required to have elaborate alarm systems and surveillance cameras that trigger directly to the police department," Fagan said. "Otherwise you can't have mom and pop having these deals take place out of their homes. Guns in the wrong hands cause deadly problems."
Others think responsible gun ownership is a legal right, especially for sporting activities and for personal protection. They say kitchen-table gun sales are better than relatively anonymous sales at big department stores because, typically, they are gun experts selling to people they know, within their own neighborhoods.
"I've been around guns my whole life," said Scott Dapson, a dealer who operates out of his DeWitt home, and is typical of a small-time gun dealer because he sells about 75 weapons a year. "This is a hobby. I'm in it to make some money, but you're not going to make a lot at it."
Licensed to deal At the Hannibal Quick Mart, you can rent a movie, pick up a "shrimp-to-go" dinner and order a handgun in the one-room general store at Church and Cayuga streets in Hannibal.
John Andocs, a native of Romania, has been selling guns there since 1987. Sales have dropped from 50 to 100 guns a year to fewer than 15 so far this year because of a rotten economy, he said.
Like other gun dealers in Central New York, Andocs' and Dapson's federal firearms licenses allow them to buy and sell pistols, revolvers, rifles and shotguns.
"People buy them for all kinds of reasons: personal protection, hunting, target shooting, collecting and even as an investment," said David Steinberg, manager of the sporting goods department at Ra-Lin's, one of the area's largest gun dealers, selling hundreds of firearms each year.
The ATF, which oversees those licenses, forces dealers to keep track of the guns they buy and sell, but not report those transactions.
Pistol permits issued by the sheriff's department cover handguns. Permits are not needed for rifles or shotguns. But anyone who sells any weapon must do a background check on the buyer, and keep a record of the sale.
Dealers need to keep a bound book to log "acquisitions and dispositions," said Joseph Green, a special agent for the ATF in Washington. Those logs stay put until a dealer goes out of business, has his or her license revoked - which can happen because of poor record keeping - or if they commit a crime. The log then becomes property of the ATF.
ATF inspectors "have an ongoing program" to check gun dealers and make sure they're complying with the regulations, said Don Tisdale, resident agent in charge of the Syracuse ATF office.
Steinberg and other dealers said ATF agents inspect at least once a year and then do several spot checks throughout the year, usually telephoning to give 24 hours notice before they show up.
Local police say that's enough. As long as the dealers secure the weapons, they don't have a problem with their shops.
"Generally, I'm not concerned about licensed gun dealers," Syracuse Police Inspector Michael Kerwin said. "Historically, they exercise due care over their inventory and approach the sale of firearms in a legal and responsible fashion."
Sgt. Nick Harmatiuk of the state police in North Syracuse said guns that typically end up being used in crimes are not from gun dealer sales. "A lot of these - probably most of these - come from down South," he said of the guns used in crimes.
The weapons are either stolen or criminals convince or pay someone with a clean record to purchase a lot of guns from a store or dealership to resell on the streets in other states, Harmatiuk said.
Still, police and dealers acknowledge that, despite the security measures they take, there is always potential for thefts from their barn, basement or back room, as was the case twice in July in Syracuse. A gun dealer on Chaffee Avenue was robbed of 46 handguns and long guns and two weeks later a dealer on Lodi Street was robbed of another 48 weapons, all long guns.
Forty-three guns were recovered in the first theft; six have been recovered in the second.
The thefts prompted ATF agents to check both licensees' inventory, record books "and every single piece of paper related to the guns," Tisdale said. "We're not out to nail people. This is just to make sure they're doing what they should have done, especially after something is stolen."
In both cases, the dealers were not found to be at fault and retained their federal licenses, he said.
Despite the precautions and investigations, police and dealers said, thefts do occur.
"If someone's determined to break in, they'll do it, even if you've taken all reasonable and prudent measures to secure your firearms," Dapson said.
Many small operations Of the dealers in Central New York, John Reilly is one of the few with a posted sign. A shingle in the yard of his home, a cottage on West Fourth Street next to Holy Family Chapel in Fulton, indicates buyers have found "Reilly's Firearms."
Catch him before his "open" hours - 2 to 9 p.m. - and he might be in sock feet, reading the paper on the couch, but he'll likely open his business anyway, as he did last week to help an Oswego woman who needed screws for a shotgun scope mount.
On Reilly's enclosed porch, which has been remodeled with racks for displaying about 100 models of guns, six licenses are conspicuously tacked to the wall.
Like Reilly, most of the kitchen-table dealers who operate in open obscurity on busy city streets and quiet country roads are not in the business to get rich. Their cut is often about 10 percent. Most dealers say they just enjoy being around firearms.
"I'm not a hunter - I mostly just do target practice," said Samuel Christaldi, who trades out of his ranch home on a residential street in Salina. "When I was a kid, my father never wanted guns around the house. All he'd let me have were cap guns."
Uniforms, Etc., in Fulton sells nursing scrubs and navy blue police jackets, but part of the etceteras is weapons. Owner John McGraw doesn't advertise to the general public and sells only about a dozen guns a year to law enforcement personnel.
"I pretty much know who I sell to," McGraw said.
Since 1994, when the Clinton administration passed legislation to reduce the number of kitchen-table gun dealers in the United States, the number of licensed gun dealers has dropped from more than 250,000 to less than 60,000. In Central New York it went from nearly 700 to 157.
That could change if an amendment, proposed by Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., and overwhelmingly accepted by the House of Representatives, passes in the Senate.
The amendment would prohibit the ATF from asking gun dealers to hand over their records except in criminal investigations. It would prevent the agency from requiring dealers to "engage in business" by having regular hours and a premise from which they deal weapons. And the amendment would stifle the ATF's request to require gun dealers to provide an inventory.
Anti-gun groups, such as the Violence Policy Center, a nonprofit gun violence research group in Washington, D.C., say the legislation would dramatically increase the number of mom-and-pop gun dealers across America - which they say were a significant source of illegal gun trafficking.
"We'd be back to the battle days when anyone could get a license," said the center's Legislative Director Kristen Rand. "The amendment will take us back to the days when America had more gun dealers than gas stations and kitchen-table dealers were a main source of guns for criminals."
Steinberg, of Ra-Lin's, said he thinks all dealers would be in favor of eliminating some of the paperwork.
"But the requirements we have to deal with now are pretty minor," he said. "I think they keep dealers on their toes and keep legitimate dealers legitimate."
Small-time dealers say the personal nature of their business lets them give hands-on help to potential gun buyers - and they're more likely to weed out those who might be seeking firearms with bad intentions.
Carl Ross, a computer specialist and Navy veteran who sells guns in his Cazenovia home, said he caters mainly to friends of friends. If a stranger turns up with a vague notion of wanting a gun for protection from an evil world, "I usually end up talking them out of it," Ross said.
Retired truck driver George Warren's license permits him to sell guns at The Fur Shed on Route 34 just off the Thruway in Weedsport, but he can deny a sale to anyone he's uncomfortable with. He said he's fastidious with background checks, even when selling items the law doesn't require a background check for.
"I don't even let black powder out of here," he said. If the customer protests, "There's the door - that's what I tell 'em."
© 2003 The Post-Standard.
http://www.syracuse.com/news/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/news-12/1065343088173823.xml157 shops, dealers sell guns in CNY
October 05, 2003
By Sue Weibezahl and Jennifer Jacobs
Staff writers
In the 90 minutes it takes to drive across Central New York, people looking to legally buy a gun could do so at 157 locations
They could buy a gun in a lumberyard, a day care center, a clothing shop, at a convenience store. Or they could sit down at a kitchen table inside a home that looks more like grandma's house than a gun shop - complete with picket fence, nearby church and a locked gun cabinet.
These gun businesses come in all sizes and names: Guns R Us, Greg's Gun Room, Wal-Mart, Jack's Welding Repair and Hannibal Quick Mart. But only those with the interest and the Internet would likely find most of them. In seeking out more than four dozen dealers last week, The Post-Standard found only three with signs advertising guns for sale.
These federally licensed, legal dealers say they 0
operate in relative secrecy not because they are doing anything wrong, but because they don't want to publicize the location of a cache of weapons.
And because they know for some there's a stigma that surrounds guns - particularly in light of two recent thefts from local gun dealers and last year's release of "Bowling for Columbine," a controversial documentary on the gun culture in the United States and the fact that 11,000 Americans die each year as a result of gun violence.
Onondaga, Cayuga, Madison and Oswego counties have an average of one gun dealer for every 4,663 residents. Across the country, the number is one dealer for every 4,895. Statewide, the ratio is one dealer for every 8,677 citizens, according to the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Some anti-gun folks believe that all firearms should be prohibited and worry that proposed legislation easing some restrictions could increase the number of small-time dealers.
"Just knowing how many guns are out there makes me very, very alarmed," said Preston Fagan, president of the Syracuse-Onondaga NAACP. The national organization recently sued gun manufacturers, trying to curb violence.
Fagan said he favors stricter regulations for people who both buy and sell firearms.
"I'm not for putting anyone out of business, but these dealers should be required to have elaborate alarm systems and surveillance cameras that trigger directly to the police department," Fagan said. "Otherwise you can't have mom and pop having these deals take place out of their homes. Guns in the wrong hands cause deadly problems."
Others think responsible gun ownership is a legal right, especially for sporting activities and for personal protection. They say kitchen-table gun sales are better than relatively anonymous sales at big department stores because, typically, they are gun experts selling to people they know, within their own neighborhoods.
"I've been around guns my whole life," said Scott Dapson, a dealer who operates out of his DeWitt home, and is typical of a small-time gun dealer because he sells about 75 weapons a year. "This is a hobby. I'm in it to make some money, but you're not going to make a lot at it."
Licensed to deal At the Hannibal Quick Mart, you can rent a movie, pick up a "shrimp-to-go" dinner and order a handgun in the one-room general store at Church and Cayuga streets in Hannibal.
John Andocs, a native of Romania, has been selling guns there since 1987. Sales have dropped from 50 to 100 guns a year to fewer than 15 so far this year because of a rotten economy, he said.
Like other gun dealers in Central New York, Andocs' and Dapson's federal firearms licenses allow them to buy and sell pistols, revolvers, rifles and shotguns.
"People buy them for all kinds of reasons: personal protection, hunting, target shooting, collecting and even as an investment," said David Steinberg, manager of the sporting goods department at Ra-Lin's, one of the area's largest gun dealers, selling hundreds of firearms each year.
The ATF, which oversees those licenses, forces dealers to keep track of the guns they buy and sell, but not report those transactions.
Pistol permits issued by the sheriff's department cover handguns. Permits are not needed for rifles or shotguns. But anyone who sells any weapon must do a background check on the buyer, and keep a record of the sale.
Dealers need to keep a bound book to log "acquisitions and dispositions," said Joseph Green, a special agent for the ATF in Washington. Those logs stay put until a dealer goes out of business, has his or her license revoked - which can happen because of poor record keeping - or if they commit a crime. The log then becomes property of the ATF.
ATF inspectors "have an ongoing program" to check gun dealers and make sure they're complying with the regulations, said Don Tisdale, resident agent in charge of the Syracuse ATF office.
Steinberg and other dealers said ATF agents inspect at least once a year and then do several spot checks throughout the year, usually telephoning to give 24 hours notice before they show up.
Local police say that's enough. As long as the dealers secure the weapons, they don't have a problem with their shops.
"Generally, I'm not concerned about licensed gun dealers," Syracuse Police Inspector Michael Kerwin said. "Historically, they exercise due care over their inventory and approach the sale of firearms in a legal and responsible fashion."
Sgt. Nick Harmatiuk of the state police in North Syracuse said guns that typically end up being used in crimes are not from gun dealer sales. "A lot of these - probably most of these - come from down South," he said of the guns used in crimes.
The weapons are either stolen or criminals convince or pay someone with a clean record to purchase a lot of guns from a store or dealership to resell on the streets in other states, Harmatiuk said.
Still, police and dealers acknowledge that, despite the security measures they take, there is always potential for thefts from their barn, basement or back room, as was the case twice in July in Syracuse. A gun dealer on Chaffee Avenue was robbed of 46 handguns and long guns and two weeks later a dealer on Lodi Street was robbed of another 48 weapons, all long guns.
Forty-three guns were recovered in the first theft; six have been recovered in the second.
The thefts prompted ATF agents to check both licensees' inventory, record books "and every single piece of paper related to the guns," Tisdale said. "We're not out to nail people. This is just to make sure they're doing what they should have done, especially after something is stolen."
In both cases, the dealers were not found to be at fault and retained their federal licenses, he said.
Despite the precautions and investigations, police and dealers said, thefts do occur.
"If someone's determined to break in, they'll do it, even if you've taken all reasonable and prudent measures to secure your firearms," Dapson said.
Many small operations Of the dealers in Central New York, John Reilly is one of the few with a posted sign. A shingle in the yard of his home, a cottage on West Fourth Street next to Holy Family Chapel in Fulton, indicates buyers have found "Reilly's Firearms."
Catch him before his "open" hours - 2 to 9 p.m. - and he might be in sock feet, reading the paper on the couch, but he'll likely open his business anyway, as he did last week to help an Oswego woman who needed screws for a shotgun scope mount.
On Reilly's enclosed porch, which has been remodeled with racks for displaying about 100 models of guns, six licenses are conspicuously tacked to the wall.
Like Reilly, most of the kitchen-table dealers who operate in open obscurity on busy city streets and quiet country roads are not in the business to get rich. Their cut is often about 10 percent. Most dealers say they just enjoy being around firearms.
"I'm not a hunter - I mostly just do target practice," said Samuel Christaldi, who trades out of his ranch home on a residential street in Salina. "When I was a kid, my father never wanted guns around the house. All he'd let me have were cap guns."
Uniforms, Etc., in Fulton sells nursing scrubs and navy blue police jackets, but part of the etceteras is weapons. Owner John McGraw doesn't advertise to the general public and sells only about a dozen guns a year to law enforcement personnel.
"I pretty much know who I sell to," McGraw said.
Since 1994, when the Clinton administration passed legislation to reduce the number of kitchen-table gun dealers in the United States, the number of licensed gun dealers has dropped from more than 250,000 to less than 60,000. In Central New York it went from nearly 700 to 157.
That could change if an amendment, proposed by Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., and overwhelmingly accepted by the House of Representatives, passes in the Senate.
The amendment would prohibit the ATF from asking gun dealers to hand over their records except in criminal investigations. It would prevent the agency from requiring dealers to "engage in business" by having regular hours and a premise from which they deal weapons. And the amendment would stifle the ATF's request to require gun dealers to provide an inventory.
Anti-gun groups, such as the Violence Policy Center, a nonprofit gun violence research group in Washington, D.C., say the legislation would dramatically increase the number of mom-and-pop gun dealers across America - which they say were a significant source of illegal gun trafficking.
"We'd be back to the battle days when anyone could get a license," said the center's Legislative Director Kristen Rand. "The amendment will take us back to the days when America had more gun dealers than gas stations and kitchen-table dealers were a main source of guns for criminals."
Steinberg, of Ra-Lin's, said he thinks all dealers would be in favor of eliminating some of the paperwork.
"But the requirements we have to deal with now are pretty minor," he said. "I think they keep dealers on their toes and keep legitimate dealers legitimate."
Small-time dealers say the personal nature of their business lets them give hands-on help to potential gun buyers - and they're more likely to weed out those who might be seeking firearms with bad intentions.
Carl Ross, a computer specialist and Navy veteran who sells guns in his Cazenovia home, said he caters mainly to friends of friends. If a stranger turns up with a vague notion of wanting a gun for protection from an evil world, "I usually end up talking them out of it," Ross said.
Retired truck driver George Warren's license permits him to sell guns at The Fur Shed on Route 34 just off the Thruway in Weedsport, but he can deny a sale to anyone he's uncomfortable with. He said he's fastidious with background checks, even when selling items the law doesn't require a background check for.
"I don't even let black powder out of here," he said. If the customer protests, "There's the door - that's what I tell 'em."
© 2003 The Post-Standard.