Smith & Wesson No.-1 Ranked For Crime Scene Guns

[ahadams]

more anti- nonsense...

the antigun bozos appear to be getting even more desperate:

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http://www.newsday.com/news/local/w...pr17,0,1143084.story?coll=ny-ap-regional-wire

Smith & Wesson No.-1 Ranked For Crime Scene Guns

By TOM HAYS
Associated Press Writer

April 17, 2003, 7:39 PM EDT


An analysis of handguns recovered at crime scenes throughout New York state found that Smith & Wesson Corp. had made more of the weapons than any other manufacturer, according to testimony at a gun trial in Brooklyn.

The analysis -- based on previously sealed federal data from 1996 to 2000 -- ranked Lorcini Engineering as No. 2, followed by Bryco Arms; Sturm, Ruger & Co.; Davis Industries; Taurus International; Raven Arms; Glock Inc.; Hi-Point Firearms and Colt's Manufacturing Co.

The study by an expert witness, Dr. Howard Andrews, of Columbia University, also singles out individual dealers and several states as major sources of thousands of guns recovered in New York state, mainly in New York City.

Ranked first among the source states was Virginia, also home to the top two dealers. Next were Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Alabama and Connecticut.

The lists emerged this week as evidence at a federal civil trial in Brooklyn at which the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has accused dozens of handgun makers and dealers of fueling street violence in minority communities in New York state through negligent marketing practices.

The plaintiffs have built their case on the four-year sampling of so-called trace data provided by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms under court order. The newly disclosed data detail the sales history of weapons recovered at crime scenes.

The data, the lawyers argue, help prove the gun industry knew which dealers were disreputable but still sold them weapons.

But a spokesman for the defendants, Lawrence Keane, attacked the analysis by Andrews, saying it "doesn't hold up to scrutiny" because it fails to account for factors like sales volume.

Smith & Wesson was ranked first in crime scene guns "because they've been around a long time and sold tens of millions of guns," Keane, general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said Thursday. "You can't deduce anything from that."

The study also ignores the fact that many weapons used in crimes were stolen or were resold on the black market long after gun makers distributed them to legitimate dealers, Keane said. Some manufacturers identified as sources for crime scene guns have been bankrupt or defunct for years, he added.

The NAACP lawsuit alleges gun makers knowingly sell their products to corrupt dealers who supply criminals. It seeks to force distributors to restrict sales to dealers who have storefront outlets, prohibit sales to gun show dealers and limit individual purchasers to one handgun a month.

The defendants and industry trade groups argue that it's unfair and unlawful to hold manufacturers liable for the criminal use of a legal product. They also say that legislatures -- not courts -- should set standards for sales and that gun makers already do a good job of regulating themselves.

Andrews, who testified Wednesday, was to be cross-examined by gun industry lawyers on Monday.
Copyright © 2003, The Associated Press

 

[nsf003]

They are grasping at straws, that is a good sign. We need to keep the pressure on.

nsf003

 

[CZ-75]

Smith & Wesson was ranked first in crime scene guns "because they've been around a long time and sold tens of millions of guns," Keane, general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said Thursday. "You can't deduce anything from that."

BINGO.

 

[Pendragon]

And in other news, General Motors vehicles lead the nation in automobille accidents...

 

[tyme]

Do I get an insurance discount since I don't own any guns made by those manufacturers?

 

[Edward429451]

Yep. The white horses eat more than the brown horses, because there are more of the white horses...

 

[Yohan]

What about Las Baer and Kimber? Hmmm.. I wonder if price has anything to do with it.

 

[Sir Galahad]

Price has nothing to do with it. This is the old "Saturday Night Special" argument that less expensive firearms cause crime. (Yeah, like cheap beer causes alcoholism and, yes, the neo-puritans are actually trying to put forth that argument too in favor of raising alcohol sales taxes.) On the street, a stolen Les Baer or Kimber is going to get the same price as a Llama or Charles Daly. That price is somewhere around $200 to $300 tops. Fences can't command high prices because of who they're dealing with. Now, in cases of automatic weapons and to certain organized crime circles, yes, the price is high. But these people have their own suppliers and some of them are actually not even in this country anyway. On the street, a hot handgun has a price that is higher for a semi-auto, but not by much. Yes, if your Les Baer gets stolen, it will end up in the waistband of some twirp who will have paid a price that probably you paid more than that for the trigger job. The reason Smiths are out there is because they made a lot of handguns.

The funny thing about this argument is that compact cars kill more of their occupants than SUVs do. But what vehicle are the liberals trying to ban? The SUV. And what vehicles do they push? The compact. So here we see the total inconsistancy of their "concern" for the lives of others.

 

[Standing Wolf]

Smith & Wesson has sold more hand guns in the United States than any other manufacturer, so it's small wonder Smith & Wessons are used by criminals more frequently than other brands.

The vast majority of felons doing time in federal prisons ate French fries as children; therefore, eating French fries causes crime.

Leftists are moral and intellectual parasites—and shameless purveyors of ludicrous illogic into the bargain.

 

[David Park]

I'd like to know who the top two dealers are/were.

Can the information from this case be accessed online?

 

[tyme]

merged the gendisc thread with this one.

 

[Oracle]

You know something I've always wondered? Why are the gun manufacturers the ones that are required to verify whether these dealers are "disreputable"? Aren't these dealers required to have Federal Firearms Licenses? And, since they have FFL's, aren't they allowed to buy from any gun manufacturer? If the prosecution uses the "disreputable dealer" argument, throw it back onto the BATFE. Since the Feds have taken the responsibility of deciding who can and who cannot sell guns onto themselves, let them have it.

 

[David Park]

Here's an updated article on this case, including the NSSF response:
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/crime/nyc-nygun183242727apr18,0,2952622.story

Here are the top ten dealers from the article.

Dealers whose weapons were linked to the most New York City crimes, 1996-2000.

Virginia Police Equipment 152

R and B Guns, Va. 121

John Jovino Gun Shop, Manhattan 101

Southern Police Equipment Co., Va. 101

Leslie Edelman of N.Y. Inc., Farmingdale 78

Woody's Pawn Shop, S.C. 68

Alpine Arms Corp, N.Y. 65

Peninsula Gun Works, Va. 55

Vance's Shooter's Supplies Inc., Ohio 55

Sile Distributors Inc., N.Y. 53

As I suspected, most of these dealers (including John Jovino, which was featured in American Rifleman not too long ago) seem to be high-volume police supply shops. I doubt the dealers themselves are doing anything illegal.

 

[David Park]

Some quotes from NY dealers in the top five:

John Jovino Co. ... sold 102 guns that turned up in criminal investigations....
That's a big number - considering that 86 percent of the country's gun retailers never have a weapons linked to a crime. But Jovino has been in business since 1911 - and from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, the firm wholesaled millions of guns, many to law enforcement.

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/56736.htm

Robert Ishkanian, president of Edelman's Pistol Permit Service, said that Leslie Edelman of N.Y. went out of business around 1997 as a firearms retailer. Ishkanian said the ATF data does not surprise him because the Edelman retail operation was the largest seller of firearms in the area.

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local...7282598.story?coll=nyc-manheadlines-manhattan

 

[JohnBT]

Here's an interesting 1993 article on Virginia Police Supply.

The story goes that she and her husband were cooperating with the Feds for 4 years to bust gun smugglers, but when she stopped selling enough guns to strawman buyers they busted them. Her husband, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, committed suicide when they wouldn't let him change his guilty plea. JT
___________________________________
From: [email protected] (FRANK NEY)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns,dc.talk.guns
Subject: Does BATF *want* to stop Strawman purchases???
Date: 2 Feb 93 20:10:04 GMT

Neal Knox Report

An Outrage In Virginia
By NEAL KNOX
WASHINGTON, D.C. (Jan. 10) -- As a fight gears up in Congress
over increasing the powers of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms, and on the eve of an all-out state legislative
fight to limit Virginians to one handgun purchase per month, a
politically ambitious U.S. Attorney has "made an example" of a
family-run gun store in Richmond.

Those three events are closely connected.

BATF has released a three-page "study" that says Virginia
dealers are the source of 40 percent of seized New York City
handguns which "could be traced."

The U.S. Attorney in Richmond, Richard Cullen, says an
"astonishing" 27 percent of the guns traced to New York came
from that one Richmond gun store.

During her sentencing three days before Christmas, Hilda
Weiss, the co-owner of that Richmond store, told the Federal
judge that she and her late husband had sold large quantities
of guns to people who BATF says were straw purchasers for a gun
smuggling ring.

Mrs. Weiss also told the court that she had never done
anything wrong except for pleading guilty to BATF and Cullen's
charges of gun control act violations -- a statement which the
Richmond Times-Dispatch said had "shaken" the Federal judge.

She also told the court that she had actively been
cooperating with BATF for four years. Not only had she
complied with the long-standing requirement that all multiple
handguns sales be reported to BATF within 24 hours, she had
immediately reported to BATF agents by coded telephone beeper
calls whenever anyone purchased three or more handguns.

Not only was such service to BATF not required by law, but it
was done at considerable personal risk. Many of those volume
buyers came back to her store to complain they had been stopped
by BATF, and one who had been imprisoned was reportedly making
threats against Mrs. Weiss.

Mrs. Weiss also told me that she had testified against
illegal buyers in a half-dozen trials, and that many more
entered guilty pleas as a result of information she had passed
on to BATF.

When she asked her main BATF contact, Irvin Moran, whether
she should stop making multiple sales, particularly to people
he and other agents asked her to watch for, she told me he
said, "No, no. Just be sure they tell you they're buying the
guns for themselves."

If she had quit making the sales, Moran and the BATF wouldn't
have been able to make so many smuggling cases -- which is the
way agents get promoted and prosecutors build a political
reputation.

About three months after Virginia Police Supply quit selling
more than two guns per customer, she and her husband were
charged with making strawman sales. Somebody didn't want them
to quit.

The best evidence that Mrs. Weiss is telling the truth is
U.S. prosecutor Cullen's own statement that a fourth of the
traceable guns seized in New York came from Virginia Police
Equipment.

Obviously, if due to Mrs. Weiss' efforts the BATF and law
enforcement agencies were able to keep the guns under
surveillance from her parking lot all the way to New York,
those guns would show up among the 453 Virginia guns reported
traced to New York by BATF in 1990.

Though that was 40 percent of the 1,126 guns traced, the
known Virginia guns were only 3.3 percent of the 13,759
handguns seized by New York City police. If 27 percent of
those 453 guns --about 122 guns -- came from the Weiss shop,
what happened to the several hundred other mass purchase guns
that Mrs. Weiss sold with the encouragement of BATF agent Irvin
Moran?

Apparently they slipped through the BATF surveillance and are
on the streets of New York City -- thanks to BATF.

Mrs. Weiss told the Court that by her active assistance to
BATF she thought that she, a German immigrant, was doing
something for the good of the nation.

Mrs. Weiss received a sentence of five months incarceration,
plus five months' house arrest, plus $30,000 fine.

She also received a life sentence of guilt for the death of
her husband, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, who killed
himself when he was not allowed to withdraw his own guilty
plea.

"If I hadn't cooperated with them, he would still be alive,"
she tearfully told me yesterday. "We pleaded guilty only
because they threatened to charge our son, who has his whole
life ahead of him."

"My husband killed himself because he wanted to end the
nightmare for me. But the nightmare keeps going."

The BATF has released a transcript which appears to involve
Don Weiss in a knowing strawman sale. As the court found in
another mom and pop gunshop straw man case, the Paul and Billie
Hayes prosecution in New Mexico a dozen years ago, the widely
publicized Hayes transcript was phony.

BATF's transcript was marked "unintelligible" for sections of
the audio tape where the court reporter could clearly hear Paul
Hayes refusing to take illegal actions, but appeared extremely
incriminating in sections which the judge and court reporter
found unintelligible on the audio tape. (The jury found the
Hayes' not guilty in seven minutes.)

I don't know whether the Don Weiss transcript was phony, and
won't until it can be compared to the audio tape. But that
case is moot, for Don Weiss is dead.

I do know that there are some major questions about BATF's
conduct in this case, and whether they and/or the U.S. Attorney
were trying to further their own careers by sacrificing the
lives of law-abiding citizens.

I have seen it happen before.

This case smells. It demands a thorough investigation.

 

[rock jock]

The lists emerged this week as evidence at a federal civil trial in Brooklyn at which the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has accused dozens of handgun makers and dealers of fueling street violence in minority communities in New York state through negligent marketing practices.

Lets' change this line of thought around: what is the predominant race of the thugs who commit these crimes? Seems just as relevant as the most common gun they carry.

 

[David Park]

Very interesting article, JohnBT. The Virginia one-handgun-a-month law did pass in 1993. However, the data being used in the NAACP case is for 1996 to 2000, and Virginia dealers are still in the top. Another successful law!

Notice that, like the 1993 article, the NAACP's data refers to "traced" guns, not total "crime" guns, and that the trace data comes from the BATF. Could the BATboys again be targeting certain uncooperative dealers? Oracle's question (where is the BATF enforcement?) needs to be answered.

 

[JohnBT]

I'm confused about what the list of offending dealers actually represents. They're using numbers from the period 1996-2000, right?

I used Virginia Police Equipment as an example because it was at the top of the list you posted with 152 guns.

But the article I posted was from 1993 about a trial that happened earlier(obviously) AFTER Virginia Police Equipment was put out of business. I wasn't able to determine precisely when the company went under. 1990 maybe? Possibly earlier. I don't remember and I'm too tired to go surfing for it.

So the FEDS encouraged this couple to sell to strawman purchasers in order to pad their arrest stats more than 10 years ago, let quite a few of the guns get into circulation for whatever reasons, and now somebody is cooking the books to make a political point. Of course the guns from this company were used by criminals - - - - the FEDS encouraged them to sell to criminals and it shouldn't come as a surprise that criminals still have, and use, the guns.

This is the fault of exactly who?

Statistics.

John

P.S. - I've been here since 1972 and I don't even remember a store by that name. I'm more of a Green Top and DeGoffl's kind of customer.

 

[LiquidTension]

I read the results from a poll conducted in prisons a while ago. I'm pretty sure it was posted on TFL but I don't really remember. Anyway, it basically said that criminals prefer well made, large frame, large calibre revolvers. S&W fits that perfectly. Using this information, we can deduce that more S&W guns are used in crimes because that's what criminals want to use. Anybody with a link to this info, please post it as I don't remember where I read it. Might be the same poll that showed 97% of criminals have a better place to get a gun than at gun shows.

 

[JohnBT]

"Leslie Edelman of N.Y. Inc., Farmingdale 78"

Hey, this is the guy who owns Kimber. I must have been tired last night to miss this when I read the list.

Anyhow, according to the morning paper the 2 or the 4 Virginia shops on the list are out of business.

A 3rd, Southern Police Equipment, didn't do a lot of business that I ever saw and recently stopped selling to the public. If they were doing anything unlawful they must have had a lot of nerve. They're located on Midlothian Turnpike in Chesterfield County...across the street from the Virginia State Police Headquarters.

John