stolen gun issue

[midtennpawnstar]

Today i was in the middle of selling a used Ruger speed six revolver to a customer.I was putting the gun info through the TBI (Tennessee Bureau of Investigation) background check when i got a phone call from the TBI asking about the serial number because it had been reported stolen.....

Now here is where my issue is when we purchase or pawn an item especially a firearm at the end of every workday we automatically send a detailed incoming inventory list of the items we have taken in and their information to the local and state law enforcement offices. It is their job to check the list for missing and stolen items and when they find something they usually come in within 2 days to pick it up. They call us and place a hold on it and pick it up. We have to wait 15 days before we can put a recently acquired gun on the shelf to sell it , that is standard procedure but this Ruger revolver had been on the shelf since October and had not been found to be stolen until i was in the middle of selling it......not only did it make our store feel bad but it was a total FAIL on the part of the TBI for not trying to locate it as they should have.

 

[Bubba613]

OK. And your issue is?
Sometimes it takes a while for guns to be reported stolen. IN the meantime they can end up in dealer's inventory. I am pretty sure this happened to me recently.

 

[NavyLCDR]

You took the gun in in October. The TBI checked the gun's serial number in October. The gun could have been reported stolen anytime between October and January 14th.

Do you really want the state to keep track of where every gun is located by serial number at all times? That's called registration. How many crimes do you think such a registration would actually solve compared to the cost of maintaining such a database and compared to the 4th amendment violation of law abiding citizens created by such a registration?

And, how do you know the gun was reported stolen in Tennessee? Maybe the gun was reported in another state and the info filtered to TBI.

Maybe the gun was stolen from a military member on deployment, and they didn't know the gun was stolen until they returned and checked their stuff. When I went to Iraq for 6 months, my gun was locked in the trunk of a car which was locked in a storage unit.

but it was a total FAIL on the part of the TBI for not trying to locate it as they should have.

I don't think there is any basis for this statement at all, until proof is obtained that the gun was on the stolen list in October when they received your report.

 

[Messenger Guard]

I certainly own enough guns that one could be stolen and I may not know it for years. Many stay in boxes in my safe. One could be removed from the box and I may not know it for sometime.

 

[midtennpawnstar]

OK. And your issue is?
Sometimes it takes a while for guns to be reported stolen. IN the meantime they can end up in dealer's inventory. I am pretty sure this happened to me recently.

My issue is that they have all the necessary info and equipment to go back and check the records we provide for a gun to see if it had been taken in before it was reported stolen and they did not do that.....also it irritates me because we did what we are required to do by holding the weapon a specified amount of days before putting it out for sale and it makes us look bad for having a stolen gun out for sale when we didnt know it was....they could have found it in our report and picked it up or called in a hold on it....i know for a fact it wasnt reported stolen on the day i went to sale it so they had time.

 

[midtennpawnstar]

You took the gun in in October. The TBI checked the gun's serial number in October. The gun could have been reported stolen anytime between October and January 14th.

Do you really want the state to keep track of where every gun is located by serial number at all times? That's called registration. How many crimes do you think such a registration would actually solve compared to the cost of maintaining such a database and compared to the 4th amendment violation of law abiding citizens created by such a registration?

And, how do you know the gun was reported stolen in Tennessee? Maybe the gun was reported in another state and the info filtered to TBI.

Maybe the gun was stolen from a military member on deployment, and they didn't know the gun was stolen until they returned and checked their stuff. When I went to Iraq for 6 months, my gun was locked in the trunk of a car which was locked in a storage unit.



I don't think there is any basis for this statement at all, until proof is obtained that the gun was on the stolen list in October when they received your report.

it was stolen in metro Nashville which is less than a half hour from our location and i understand what you are saying about keeping track of where every gun is located but that is not what this is about they acquired the stolen gun report and did not check their records or ours that we send them to see if it had came up. instead they sat back and waited for it to come up which may sound like its okay but its not my buisness is out the money we paid plus the profit we would have made and thank God that the customer understood that there was a mis hap with the process and was not upset.

 

[NavyLCDR]

My issue is that they have all the necessary info and equipment to go back and check the records we provide for a gun to see if it had been taken in before it was reported stolen and they did not do that

Sounds a little bit too much like gun registration to me. The state has no business knowing who has each serial number gun in their possession, under the guise of being able to check all the serial numbers of guns everywhere in the event that one is reported stolen.

 

[rust collector]

I agree that this makes everyone look bad, but also shows that fail-safe works. Better to pick it up on the third pass than to have a customer in possession of a stolen gun.

If I were in your position I would be talking with TBI to find out what caused this problem, and what can be done to fix it. They will also be keenly interested in who pawned/sold it and the shop should recover its investment from TBI or the previous "owner", who can take it upstream if (s)he was legit.

That's what I would want to happen if someone stole my gun. I would not be happy that it wasn't located more quickly when the numbers had been turned in, but I would sure be happy to have it back (eventually. I would document the condition it was in before it left your custody so if they ding it up in the evidence room, that is not your problem).

 

[McCall911]

Today i was in the middle of selling a used Ruger speed six revolver to a customer.I was putting the gun info through the TBI (Tennessee Bureau of Investigation) background check when i got a phone call from the TBI asking about the serial number because it had been reported stolen.....

Now here is where my issue is when we purchase or pawn an item especially a firearm at the end of every workday we automatically send a detailed incoming inventory list of the items we have taken in and their information to the local and state law enforcement offices. It is their job to check the list for missing and stolen items and when they find something they usually come in within 2 days to pick it up. They call us and place a hold on it and pick it up. We have to wait 15 days before we can put a recently acquired gun on the shelf to sell it , that is standard procedure but this Ruger revolver had been on the shelf since October and had not been found to be stolen until i was in the middle of selling it......not only did it make our store feel bad but it was a total FAIL on the part of the TBI for not trying to locate it as they should have.

I was a dispatcher with a sheriff's department in Alabama and I used to run pawn items through NCIC regularly. I would say that our whole staff would run these items daily.
One fairly recent development by NCIC is this feature: Say you ran a certain serial number on a gun in October and it was entered as stolen in February. The NCIC program "remembers" that serial number which was run previously and will send an automated notification to the agency which ran it, to notify them of the current stolen status. I don't remember the precise wording of the message, but do remember that it's reasonably clear. It's also up to the original agency to determine why this serial number was run in the first place, because they can expect a follow up message from the FBI. Sometimes even a phone call.

I can't really say what happened in your case, but if you have concerns you should contact the agency which ran the serial numbers on that gun initially.

 

[Jesse Heywood]

All that you can control is what happens on your end. I would give myself a cooling off period, then contact the agency that you send the report to and give them an opportunity to explain what happened. After you get an answer, share what you can with the customer. And make an offer doing something to help calm his ruffled feathers. That way the customer knows you are trying to do what's right.

 

[Bubba613]

I have a feeling the head of TICS might be weighing in on this in the near future.

 

[midtennpawnstar]

I apologize for the comments in regard to the TBI

Okay i had a very insightful conversation with a gentlemen from the TBI and i apologize for the comments that may have been against the procedures of the TBI after talking to the gentlemen i was informed that there are indeed ways for us to check the guns to make sure they are not stolen before taking them on pawn or as a purchase so we will definitely be doing that from now on....again my post was mostly out of frustration but i appreciate all the comments made in regards to the situation.