SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2010
KLMNO
forhimbecausehewas20at thetimeand“not of legal age to purchase one himself,” police said. In a May 2006 straw purchase, a man
bought ahandgunatRealco for a felonfriend who wanted to shoot abortion doctors. The plot was foiled after the felon’s family called authoritiesweeks later. In another straw scheme that ended later
that year, a 22-year-old District man on probation for a handgun violation had his 47-year-old girlfriend, an officemanager at a law firm who had a clean record, buy hand- guns for him on four shopping trips to Realco, prosecutors said. The scheme unrav- eled after police recovered one of the guns in theDistrict. The ATF trace revealed that the woman
had bought it at Realco two months before. After talking with an ATF agent, she filed reports that one of the guns was stolen, but she eventually said she gave it to her boy- friend. Theman“went toRealcoGunswithher on
eachoccasion,” she told theATF, according to adocument filedincourt.
The strawpurchase W
henErikDixonfirst shot at aman,he hadinhis gripa relativelynewRuger .40-caliberhandgunfromRealco.
Dixon, then 21, had a string of arrests,was
on federal probation, had abused drugs and complainedofhearing voices inhishead. Standing outside his mother’s home in
Landover the night of May 3, 2003, he accused a man, an acquaintance, of attack- ing him. Dixon ordered the man to the ground, took $200 fromhimand pulled the trigger. The bullet struck the asphalt, and lead fragments ricocheted into the victim’s face and shoulder. As Dixon put the gun to the back of the
man’s head, a police car turned onto the street.Dixonfled. Whenpolice arrestedDixontwodays later,
the gun fell from his waistband. Realco had sold the gun about eight months before, records show, to aman who had lived in the area. Charged with attempted murder, Dixon
claimedhewas insane.Thecourts senthimto prisonona lesser charge of felony assault. Once out, he met Cathy R. Anderson, 31,
and soon asked that she buy a gun for him. In January 2007, the pair visited Realco, where she made a down payment on a Glock .45, signing a formsaying shewas buying the gun for herself. Dixon was in the store with her, she later toldpolice. She told investigators she didn’t know of
his criminal past. She said she never touched the gun after she picked it up on a return trip toRealco. “I took it back to Erik’s truck and gave it to
him,” she toldpolice. Two months later, Anderson called Mary-
landStatePolice,nervousaboutwhat shehad done. That day, April 5, they opened a straw- purchase investigation to track down Dixon andthe gun.Ninedays later,hemurderedhis sister’s boyfriend. He was arrested nine days after that in
Virginia.Anderson cooperatedwith prosecu- tors, who chose not to charge her. Dixon is serving a 60-year sentence. In phone messages, Anderson declined to
be interviewed, saying Dixon is no longer in her life. “That was then; this is now,” she said. “. . .
I’msorry forwhathappened.”
fallisd@washpost.com
Contributing to this reportwere staffwriters James V.Grimaldi and SariHorwitz, videographerBen de laCruz, staff researcher Julie Tate and former staff researcherMeg Smith.
After gun industry pressure, veil was draped over tracing data
BY JAMESV.GRIMALDI AND SARIHORWITZ Under the law, investigators cannot reveal
federal firearms tracing information that showshowoftenadealer sellsguns that endup seized in crimes. The law effectively shields retailers from lawsuits, academic study and public scrutiny. It also keeps the spotlight off the relationship between rogue gun dealers andthe blackmarket infirearms. Suchinformationusedtobe availableunder
a simple Freedomof Information Act request. But seven years ago, under pressure from the gun lobby, Congress blacked out the informa- tion by passing the so-called Tiahrt amend- ment, named for Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.). The law removed from the public record a government database that traces guns recov- eredincrimes back to thedealers. “Itwasextraordinary,andthemostoffensive
thing you can think of,” said Chuck Wexler, director of the Police Executive Research Fo- rum, a nonprofit group for police chiefs. “The tracingdata,whichisnowsecret,helpedus see thebigpictureofwheregunsarecomingfrom.” The amendment also kept the data from
being used by cities and interest groups to sue the firearms industry, an avenue of attack modeled after the lawsuits against tobacco companies. “They were trying to drive a stake through the heart of the [gun] industry,” said Lawrence Keane, general counsel for the Na- tional Shooting Sports Foundation. “It took an act ofCongress to stopthe litigation.” To break through the federal secrecy im-
posed by the Tiahrt amendment, The Post obtained hundreds of thousands of state and localpolice recordsanddiditsowntracingand analysis. To develop Maryland statistics, The Post tookrecords ofhandgunsales froma state database and cross-referenced them against lists of gun serial numbers from police evi- dence logs in the District and Prince George’s County.ForVirginia,ThePostgatheredrecords of guntraces froma StatePolicedatabase. The National Rifle Association and other
gun rights activists say releasing the tracing data unfairly tainted honest businesses by de- monizing legal gunsales.Tiahrt anddefenders of his amendment say it was backed by a
nationalpoliceunionandthefederalBureauof Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, whichwanted the database to be kept secret to protectundercover officers. But Bradley A. Buckles, ATF director at the
time, saidhisagencydidnotaskfor theamend- ment. “It just showed up,” he said. “I always assumedtheNRAdidit.” TheNRA said the amendment protects gun
owners and manufacturers. The data were being “used to push a political agenda,” said Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action. “None of these individual dealers or companies was going to be able to withstand the avalanche of lawsuits andbeingheldliterally responsible for crime.” The proposal surprised some members of
the House Appropriations Committee when it came up for a vote in July 2003. As a result, it barely passed, 31-30, though the committee was full ofNRA supporters such as Rep. Frank R.Wolf (R-Va.), who voted no because he was troubledatbeing“caught flat-footedandblind- sided.” After the vote, Rep. James P. Moran Jr.
(D-Va.) objected. “It was not the subject of hearings. It has no support from law enforce- ment. Ithasno support fromAttorneyGeneral [John]Ashcroft. It really serves to protect only themost corrupt gun dealers at the expense of all other legitimate gundealers.” Tracing began after the Gun Control Act of
1968,whichrequires licenseddealers to collect certain information when a firearm is sold. A buyer must affirm that he or she is at least 21 andnot a felon, a fugitive, anillegal immigrant or mentally ill. Dealers must list the informa- tion on Form 4473, with the firearm’s serial numbers, to allowpolice to trace guns. For three decades, tracing was used mostly
to help police catch criminals linked to recov- ered guns. But in 1995, Professor Glenn L. Pierce of Northeastern University analyzed ATF tracing data and discovered that a tiny fraction of gun dealers—1 percent—were the original sellers of amajority of the guns seized at crime scenes—57percent. Pierce’s analysis “blew everybody away” at
the ATF, recalled Joseph R. Vince Jr., then deputy chief of the firearms division. Law enforcementmight be able to reduce crime by
focusing ona relativehandful of gundealers. The Clinton administration seized on the
findings to encourage police to request a trace on every gun they confiscated. In 2000, Trea- sury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers, who oversawtheATF,announced“intensiveinspec- tions” of the 1percent—1,012 gunstores. The inspections detected serious problems.
Nearlyhalf of thedealers couldnot account for all of their guns, for a total of 13,271 missing firearms. More than half were out of compli- ancewith record-keeping. And they hadmade nearly 700 sales to potential traffickers or prohibitedpeople.More than450dealerswere sanctioned, and 20 were referred for license revocation. The ATF proposed tougher rules, such as
requiring dealers to conduct regular invento- ries to detect lost or stolen guns. The gun industry opposed the rule, calling it a step towardanational registry of gunownership. Lawmakers and groups such as the Brady
Center to Prevent Gun Violence used the trac- ing data to identify the top 10 “bad apple” gun dealers. That angered gun store owners and manufacturers,who argued that selling traced gunsdoesnotprovewrongdoing. The industry turnedits anger into action. For years, the ATF had been releasing trac-
ing data thatwas at least a year old.AFreedom of InformationAct lawsuit pushed for contem- poraneous data, but the ATF balked because it felt that the release of real-time trace data could threaten investigations. The standoff landedinthe SupremeCourt.
In February 2003, before oral arguments,
theNRApersuadedRep.GeorgeR.Nethercutt (R-Wash.) toaddaprovisioncodifying the time delayintoa544-pageomnibus spendingbill. In adramaticmove, thehighcourt canceledargu- ments.The case eventuallywas tossedout. Next, the gun lobbymoved to take the trace
dataoutofpubliccirculationaltogether. InJuly 2003, Tiahrt introduced his amendment, say- ing, “Iwanted tomake sure Iwas fulfilling the needs ofmy friendswho are firearmsdealers.” Tiahrt — who lost in this year’s Republican
Senate primary—said he also was lobbied by the FraternalOrder of Police. “They believed it would allow criminals to track down who undercoverofficerswere,”Tiahrt said.ButFOP Executive Director James Pasco Jr. said the union played no role in drafting the amend- ment. “We were not there before the fact,” he said. “Wewere supportive after the fact.” An appeals court in Chicago ridiculed the
undercover argument, saying it was one of several “far-fetchedhypothetical scenarios” of- fered to oppose releasing the data. Although the FOP supported the Tiahrt amendment, policechiefsacross thecountryhaveopposedit as animpediment to local lawenforcement. In2007,mayors ledbyNewYork’sMichaelR.
Bloomberg attacked the amendment, saying it shielded dealers who broke the law. Armed with trace information from before the ban, NewYorkfiledcivil suitsagainstmorethantwo dozen dealers in Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia. The city hired investigators todoundercover stings for illegal gun sales. Twenty-one dealers accepted court monitoring of their businesses. Tiahrt and the NRA said the lawsuits com-
promised18ATFinvestigations.However,ATF associate chief counsel Barry Orlow said none was compromised. During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama
RICK CARIOTI/THE WASHINGTON POST
Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.) introduced the amendment that blocked gun tracing data.
promised to repeal the Tiahrt restrictions on localpolice access tonational tracedata.When the administration passed its budget last year, it expanded police access but also tightened restrictions onpublicdisclosure.
grimaldij@washpost.com horwitzs@washpost.com
ResearcheditorAliceCrites contributedtothis report.
About the project
TheHidden Life of Guns is a year-long effort by four Washington Post reporters to document theway gunsmove through U.S. society, from sales at retail dealers to crimes on city streets. At the urging of the gun lobby seven years ago, Congress removed frompublic viewa federal database that traced guns back to stores. The blackout helped cut off a growing number of lawsuits against and newspaper investigations of gun stores. To break this secrecy in Maryland, Virginia and theDistrict, The Post relied on its own analysis of state and local records.
TOMORROW Sixty percent of guns sold in Virginia since 1998 and later seized by police can be traced to just40 dealers.
TUESDAY The embattled ATF.
K EZ SU
A11 THE HIDDEN LIFE OF GUNS
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