Crime gun prince in Queen City

Submitted by scharrison on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 6:49pm

Not a designation of which to be proud:

A Charlotte gun dealer ranked second in the nation in a list of stores selling guns later linked to crimes, according to data published Monday by The Washington Post.

More than 2,000 guns sold by Charlotte's Hyatt Coin and Gun, at 3332 Wilkinson Blvd., were classified as "crime guns" recovered by police since 2006, according to federal data.

Just the fact that these guns could be tracked back to the dealer probably pisses off the more extreme gun nuts, but here is the pat response from one of the GOLO crowd:

It sells more clicks to make statistically meaningless, but sensational headlines.

I'm just trying to help WRAL find their next group of innocent merchants to demonize in order to help sell ad space...

Right, that's what it's all about, not exposing a potentially flawed and dangerous situation. Speaking of flawed and dangerous, allowing people to buy guns over the Internet has got to be one of the stupidist things I've heard of:

The shop's online sales make up about 20% of revenue. "We've only been doing it a couple of years. You have to do everything right--write good ad copy, take great photographs, respond to e-mail and telephone calls quickly, learn to pack boxes properly, learn to collect money. There are no shortcuts."

So I guess "figuring out if the anonymous Internet buyer is legal and responsible" is not one of the more difficult aspects of online gun sales. As opposed to incredibly important things like packing boxes and such. Sheesh.

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Online Sales

Submitted by SPLib on Wed, 12/15/2010 - 11:17am.

They are not really direct internet sales. The firerams must be shipped to someone with a federal firearms license (FFL). This usually means they are shipped to a local gun shop who then typically charges a processing fee on the sale. That transfer at the local must comply with all relevant laws and background checks.

As far as the "crime gun" designation, I would think it is pretty closely related to volume of sales. 50 guns a day is a LOT more than the average gun shop sells. I would think that puts them in the top single digit percentage in gross sales among all gun stores. If someone came out with a study proving more people die wearing underwear purchesed at Wal Mart than any other retailer, would that mean there Wal Mart sells particularly dangerous tidy whities or is it really just an indication of market share?

A little background on FFL's

Submitted by scharrison on Wed, 12/15/2010 - 12:24pm.

From a PBS Frontline piece:

The next biggest source of illegal gun transactions where criminals get guns are sales made by legally licensed but corrupt at-home and commercial gun dealers. Several recent reports back up Wachtel's own studies about this, and make the case that illegal activity by those licensed to sell guns, known as Federal Firearms Licensees (FFLs), is a huge source of crime guns and greatly surpasses the sale of guns stolen from John Q. Citizen. Like bank robbers, who are interested in banks, gun traffickers are interested in FFLs because that's where the guns are. This is why FFLs are a large source of illegal guns for traffickers, who ultimately wind up selling the guns on the street.

ATF officials say that only about 8% of the nation's 124,000 retail gun dealers sell the majority of handguns that are used in crimes. They conclude that these licensed retailers are part of a block of rogue entrepreneurs tempted by the big profits of gun trafficking.

That's about 9,920 bent retailers, which is 198 per state. You probably wouldn't even have to leave your county to find one. Just sayin'

Old

Submitted by SPLib on Wed, 12/15/2010 - 3:16pm.

I don't know 100% how things have changed, but I think that Frontline episode is about 15 years old.

I do know it is now near impossible to get a class 1 FFL without a storefront, so most at-home dealers in existence would be grandfathered. Even the grandfathered home dealers have much higher compliance issues than a few years ago. For one, there are pretty high security requirements to ensure it is hard to steal the inventory.

I am sure the Frontline episode had a lot to do with the crackdown on licensing and standards.

As far as why someone would buy a gun online instead of a local dealer (they have to go through them anyway), there are a lot of brands out there and there can be some pretty high minumum orders to become a dealer. The local guy may not carry a line but might be happy to make $25-$50 off a transfer.

You're right, it looks like 1997

Submitted by scharrison on Wed, 12/15/2010 - 5:02pm.

was the original air date, so some of that stuff has probably been dealt with already.

As to the storefront thing, I know when I wrote this piece about Justice Brady, he was selling sans-storefront (Class 3 no less). But he was probably grandfathered too, as he had retired from the ATF in the early 1990's and probably got his license soon after.