A10 THE HIDDEN LIFE OF GUNS
One shop, 18 years, 86 guns tied to homicides
guns from A1
ical pressure and laws that make convictions difficult. The investigationalso foundthat: l Nearly two out of three guns sold in
Virginia since 1998 and recovered by local authorities came from about 1 percent of the state’s dealers—40 stores out of 3,400 selling guns. Most of those 40 had received govern- ment warnings that their licenses were in jeopardy because of regulatory violations. But only fourhadtheir licenses revoked,andallare still legally selling guns after transferring their licenses, reapplying or re-licensing under new owners. l A gun store in Portsmouth, Va., trans-
formedover thepast sevenyears fromamodest family-owned business into one of the state’s top sellers of “crime guns,” leading Virginia in the category of how quickly its guns moved fromthe sales counter to crime scenes. l The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives, which investigates gun trafficking and regulates the firearms in- dustry, is hamstrung by the law, politics and bureaucracy. The agency still has the same number of agents it had three decades ago. It can take as long as eight years between inspec- tions of gun stores. And even when inspectors turn up evidence ofmissing guns, they cannot compel adealer to take inventory. In Maryland, Realco towers over the other
350 handgun dealers in the state as a source of guns confiscated in the District and Prince George’sCounty, themost violent jurisdictions in the area. Nearly one out of three guns The Post traced to Maryland dealers came from Realco. The rest were spread among other shops across the state. The store is a paradox for law enforcement
andpoliticians. Itsownerssaytheyscrupulous- ly followhandgunlaws. State andfederal regu- lators have documented onlyminor problems innumerous inspections. “The owners ofRealcoGuns are cooperative
with our detectives and have been compliant with all reporting requirements,” said Maj. Andy Ellis, commander of the public affairs division for Prince George’s police. “It shows a weakness in our system when a company like Realco can adhere to the law yet still be the source of so many crime guns. I can only imaginehowmuchlowerourviolent-crimerate wouldbe ifRealco soldshoes insteadof guns.”
Dealers on the front lines T
racing brings into sharp relief the fact that virtually all crime guns are first sold as new weapons by a licensed dealer to
someonewhoclearedabackgroundcheck.The criminal demand for weapons — especially newones thatcannotbetiedtopreviouscrimes —putsdealersat thefront lineof crimepreven- tion. One ATF study found that about half the
guns in trafficking cases started as “straw purchases” from licensed dealers. As in the Dixoncase, a personwitha cleanrecord buys a gun for a personwho cannot or does notwant to do so. TheATF looks tomerchants to proac- tivelyweedout suspicious customers, suchas a girlfriendbuying for a boyfriend. Most expertsandATFofficialsagree that the
number of conscientiousdealers far outweighs theminority thatbreak the law. Strawschemes can be hard to detect. A gun traced to a merchant does not necessarily signal that the merchant did anythingwrong, the experts say. The number of traces a store generates is shapedbymanyfactors, includingthe typeand number of guns sold, geography, clientele and howclerks vet customers. TheDistrict has nowalk-in gun shops but is
ringed by more than 100 in Maryland and Virginia. Of the 996 guns successfully traced last year in the city, about one-fourth were tracked back to Maryland dealers, one-fourth toVirginiadealersandtherest toshopsnation- wide, according to theATF. To track crime guns in the District and
PrinceGeorge’s, The Post used public informa- tion requests to obtain local police logs listing 76,000 guns recovered by police in the two jurisdictions, thenmatchedthe serialnumbers against aMarylanddatabase of gunsales. About 9,400 had no serial numbers and
could not be matched. Another 13,300 were rifles or shotguns, which the state does not track. About 44,000 guns were not listed in state sales records,meaning theweaponswere probably sold by dealers scattered across the country or had their serial numbers entered intopolice logs incorrectly. About 8,700 gunswere tracked to theMary-
landmerchants that last soldthem. Police in theDistrict and PrinceGeorge’s on
average seized more than 160 Realco guns annually from 1997 through 2008. Realco’s firearms end up at local crime scenes at a rate nearly twice that of any other activeMaryland dealer thathad10ormore guns seized. Onasingleday,policehaveloggedtwo, three
or evenfour guns soldbyRealco, records show. A Taurus .40-caliber pistol sold by the store
in March 2004 was put to work in a murder three weeks later at a Popeyes in Oxon Hill, where 20-year-old Robert Garner Jr. killed 22-year-oldKelvinBraxton.Police learnedthat Garner’s girlfriendhadbought the gun. AGlock .45-caliber the shopsoldtoAlfredL.
Evans in June 2004 was used in October 2005 in Clinton at a busy traffic light to kill 28-year- old Keith Ingaharra. After one driver cut the other off in evening rush-hour traffic, Ingahar- ra stepped from his car waving his hands. Evans shot Ingaharra in the hip, leg and chest andthendrovehome. “Hehadthegunright thereathis fingertips,”
Oct.
2005 Keith Ingaharra, above, was fatally shot by Alfred Evans during a traffic altercation. “He had the gun right there at his fingertips,” Ingaharra’smother, Bonnie Rogers, at right, said of Evans. “He just took it out and blew himaway.” Evans purchased the Glock in 2004 at Realco.
said Ingaharra’s mother, Bonnie Rogers. “He just took it out andblewhimaway.” A Kel-Tec 9mm sold by Realco in January
2007 was used by Terris T. Luckett seven months later to shoot hiswife 20 times, killing her at their Clinton home. He then killed a barber, John Scales III, in his shop. Luckett, who bought the gun, incorrectly thought the twowerehaving anaffair,police say. Realco’s president, Carlos delReal, declined
repeated requests to be interviewed, dismiss- ing thenews value of guntracing. “It’s such a ridiculous topic,” said del Real,
whotookover theshopafterhisbrotherdiedin 2008. “Maybe we should justmove our shop a fewhundredmiles away.” Glenn Ivey said that after he became Prince
George’s state’s attorney in 2002, he asked law enforcementcolleagues ifhecoulddoanything about the flow of guns from Realco, which he said he knew of fromhis time in the 1990s as a prosecutor intheDistrict. “I had an eye toward trying to take action,”
Ivey said. “The feedback we got was: They are doing it theway they are supposed to.They are following the letter of the law.” Asked about Realco, ATF spokeswoman
ClareWeber said stores with greater numbers of traces are inspectedmore frequently. “The number of traces that come back to a
[gun dealer] is not a revocable offense if the dealer is found in compliance with record- keeping requirements,” she said. Joseph R. Vince Jr., who retired from the
ATF’s Crime Gun Analysis Branch in 1999 and hasworkedas anexpert for lawyerswho repre- sent victims of gun violence, said the pattern prompts questions. “If a gun store is bleeding crime guns, you
have got to ask yourself what . . . is going on,” Vince said. “I have no problemwith somebody being in the firearms business. That is a legiti- mate business. But why can’t the public be aware of where guns to criminals are coming from?”
Realcowalks the line R
ealco, one of dozens of dealers licensed over the years to sell handguns in Prince George’s, openedmore than35 years ago
RICKY CARIOTI/THE WASHINGTON POST
The owners of Realco Guns say they scrupulously follow handgun laws. State and federal regulators have documented only minor problems in numerous inspections. Guns, hewrote, are traced formany reasons
that might not include “criminal use,” includ- ing stolenguns andgunsusedinself-defense. “We suspect that those reasons for traces,
coupled with our high volume of sales, may account forthe‘higherthanaverage’numberof guntraces attributedto our store,”hewrote. “The hundreds of sales thatwe have refused
tomake over the years,” he also noted, “are not reflectedinany statistical report.” Realcowas back inthenews inAugust 2007
when D.C. police issued a report that identi- fiedtheleadingsourcesofcrimeguns seizedin D.C. in 2006—RealcowasNo. 1with 76, three times the number of the next-most-frequent dealer. Thatmonth, prosecutor Ivey joined Jesse L.
Jackson’s Rainbow/Push Coalition and others outside Realco in a “protest against illegal guns.” Inside the shop, Maryland State Police pored over Realco’s paperwork. Investigators foundlittle of concern. “The brothers Del Real were cooperative during the inspection,” theywrote.
LEFT: FAMILY PHOTO; ABOVE: RICKY CARIOTI/THE WASHINGTON POST
when Carlos del Real’s older brother Greg securedanATFdealer’s license. The store—whoseaddress isnowinDistrict
Heights after an annexation three years ago— occupies a 1930 Craftsman-style house on a stripofMarlboroPike,betweentheLooseEnds Hair Studio and the Black Ribeye drive- through. Across the street is aDunkin’Donuts and a check-cashing service.Down the block is a liquor store andapolice substation. Stretched across one end of the front porch
at Realco is a “TeamGlock” banner, amarket- ing nod to the angular-shaped handgun. Bars line thewindows. Customers enter in the back next to a signannouncing the “RealcoOutdoor World&GunHospital.” Inside is a small paneled showroom lined
with glass display cases and space for only a handful of customers. Rifle bags, gun safes, animal trophies and assorted gun gear fill the shop. Tacked behind the counter is a small yellownotice: “Wewill refuse the sale of ammo andguns to suspectedstrawpurchasers.” Researchers in law enforcement, academia
and the media first began to examine gun tracingdataforcluestopotential illegalsalesin the late 1990s. (The efforts so angered gun supporters that they successfully lobbied Con- gress to impose a blackout on the once-public data in 2003.) In 1999, The Post identified Realcoas the sourceof493 gunsusedincrimes from1996 to 1998, basedondata fromtheATF. Thatwas twice the number of any other dealer inthe region, andlater researcherswouldrank Realcointhe top10inthenationfor crime-gun traces. At the time,Greg andCarlosdelRealdisput-
ed the numbers. They said they operated in a high-crime area but obeyedall laws. “We stepallover thesepeople’s constitution-
al rights to prevent these straw purchases,” GregdelReal said. Months later,Maryland StatePolice officials
told The Post they were “taking an aggressive look” at Realco and potential strawpurchases. Nothing came of the investigation, records show. Greg del Real followed news of the state
probe with a letter to The Post, disputing that “our store is inanyway responsible for the flow of ‘crime guns.’”
washington
post.com/guns
6
Multimedia graphic: Learn
whether police have recovered Realco guns in your area, and search for patterns using our interactive map.
DDocumentary video: The family
of Erik Dixon’s victim discusses his murder. Plus: Learn about the straw purchase that set it in motion, and step inside the forensics lab where the bullets found at the crime scene were matched with the murder weapon.
FTell us: Have you bought a
gun from Realco? Have you been a victim of gun crime? Share your story at
washingtonpost.com/ discussions.
6
Poll: Should gun stores be held
responsible for crimes committed with weapons that they have sold?
T Crime guns stack up
he gun industry often says that traces reflect little more than the number of guns amerchant has sold. ButMaryland
dealers that have sold almost asmany ormore guns thanRealco have had their guns seized at muchlower rates, records show. Realco is listed intheMaryland database as
selling 19,000 guns since 1984. Of every 1,000 sold, analysis shows, police later recovered 131. About five miles away from Realco, near
Andrews Air Force Base, is Maryland Small Arms Range Inc. The longtime dealer has sold about 15,000 guns over the past 25 years. For every 1,000it sold,police later recovered41. Jack Donald, a longtime salesman at the
shop, saidpoliceofficersoftenuse the rangeon site,potentially affectingwho shops there. “Itmay be some kindof adeterrent,”Donald
said. Atlantic Guns, a long-established dealer in
Silver Spring, has soldmore than 18,000 guns inthepast 25 years.For every 1,000sold,police have recovered28. And in Rockville, a second Atlantic Guns
location has sold more than 21,000 firearms since 1984 — the most listed in state records. Out of every 1,000 guns sold, police recovered eight. Oneof themainATFindicatorsof trafficking
is how quickly guns are seized after they are sold, knownas “time to crime.”The faster guns are recovered, the ATF has found, the more likelytheywereboughtbysomeonewithcrimi- nal intent, sometimes through straw purchas- es.Anythingless thanthree years is considered apotential redflag. Ingeneral,Realco gunshavebeenrecovered
morequicklythanguns soldbyotherMaryland dealers. In Prince George’s and the District, 55 percent of the recovered Realco guns were logged by policewithin three years, compared with 40 percent for the guns recovered from otherMarylanddealers. A Smith &Wesson .40-caliber handgun sold
in March 2006 was recovered by Prince George’s police 13 months later not far from a body, surrounded by shell casings, on a Landover street. A 26-year-old man was shot and killed after finding twomen breaking into his car. The shooter told police that he asked a 21-year-old woman to purchase the handgun
EZ SU
KLMNO
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2010
April 2007
In January 2007, Erik Dixon gave Cathy Anderson, above right, $335 to buy a .45-caliber Glock at Realco. Dixon, a felon prohibited by law from owning a gun, used the weapon three months later to murder Jerrod Falls, far right, in Landover. “It still hurts,” said Falls’s mother, Geneva Walker, at right.
PHOTO OF GENEVA WALKER BY RICKY CARIOTI/
THE WASHINGTON POST
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