Most who lie for guns go free
People who attempt illegal purchases often aren’t charged with making false claims

By Carla Crowder
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

Every three days in Colorado, someone with a homicide arrest on a rap sheet tries to buy a gun from a licensed dealer.

Consider the entire range of people banned from gun ownership, and the number of blocked gun sales leaps to more than 30 per day — 4,975 people since August, when the state took over criminal background checks, according to statistics provided by the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The Brady Law stops the gun purchases. But most illegal buyers are never charged with lying on the background-check forms — a federal crime.

It’s been a source of friction between gun-rights advocates and the government. Groups such as the National Rifle Association argue that authorities need to prosecute criminals breaking current gun laws before they pass new ones.

“If we are not investigating when a prohibited person goes into a gun store and tries to buy a gun, we are probably missing a situation where a violent criminal is attempting to acquire a gun for criminal purposes,” said NRA spokesman Jim Manown.

Letting them walk away, he said, just sends them into the black market.

Colorado’s U.S. Attorney Tom Strickland is trying to change that.

“We believe that some of these cases should be prosecuted,” Strickland said. “We can’t prosecute 5,000 people, and 5,000 people aren’t good cases, but some subset of that.”

For referrals of cases to prosecute, Strickland must rely on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, a federal agency that’s grown only slightly since the 1970s while tackling added duties such as tracing guns used in crimes for local cops.

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Gun sale denials
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation blocked 4,975 gun purchases from August through December if buyers’ rap sheets (arrests, convictions and court actions) included:
Homicide 47

Kidnapping 24

Sexual assault 148

Robbery 95

Assault 1,455

Burglary 492

Dangerous drugs 631

Larceny 256

Restraining orders 425

Other 1,402

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Nationwide, the ATF had 1,622 investigators in 1973. Now there are 1,776, according to its public affairs office.

By comparison, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration has ballooned from 1,470 agents to more than 4,200 during the same time.

In Colorado, the DEA had 24 agents 10 years ago. Now it has 65. The ATF had 16 agents a decade ago. Now it has 23.

“How do I justify three people working on a guy who tried to buy a gun and was denied, when I have another three people taking guns away?” asked Rich Marianos, the agent in charge of the Colorado Springs ATF office.

Last April, he put together a strike team of ATF agents Colorado Springs police designed to exclusively enforce gun laws.

Federal firearms indictments doubled last year in Colorado, partly because of Marianos’ pursuit of criminals who own and sell guns.

Strickland recognizes the crunch but vows that his attorneys and ATF agents will go after more criminals who knowingly break the Brady Law by trying to buy guns.

“We’re in thorough and long-running conversations with the ATF about our willingness to prosecute” background check cases, Strickland said. “We have urged ATF to bring us cases.”

- The last five months of statistics are alarming, authorities say.

Since August, 75,905 people have tried to buy guns in Colorado.

A little more than 6 percent have been denied based on an arrest, conviction, fugitive warrant or restraining order in the background check.

Many have violent-crime arrests in their backgrounds. Sixty-eight people had active warrants for their arrests when they tried to purchase a gun.

“Think about how brazen those people are,” Strickland said.

When a background check tells the gun dealer a fugitive is across the counter, police are immediately alerted. The gun seller is supposed to delay the fugitive until authorities arrive to arrest him or her on the spot.

Not all of the 4,975 people initially turned down are banned from buying a gun. Because Colorado’s system flags arrests, not convictions, a gun buyer can appeal and prove the charge was dropped.

But only 329 denials have ended in reversals because the record was clean.

Not all denials are worth prosecution, authorities say. For example, a buyer might have a 20-year-old theft conviction and a clean record since.

It is unlikely authorities would build a federal case around something so minor.

“There is no way that every crime committed in this country can be prosecuted. Nor is there any expectation,” Strickland said. “It would not be a prudent use of resources at the federal or state level.”

Also, he and Marianos pointed out, the Brady Law’s function is to make it tougher for killers and other criminals to get guns.

“The system’s doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. Five thousand guns were prevented from getting into the hands of criminals,” Marianos said.

That’s not good enough for gun-rights advocates.

“I’m not a big fan of the unfunded mandate. And if they’re going to pass these laws … they need to provide the funding,” said Dave Anver, owner of Dave’s Guns, a Parker Road gun store.

Until authorities start jailing Brady violators, he argued, criminals will patronize illegal suppliers.

“I don’t believe that a hardened criminal goes into a gun store and is denied a gun, suddenly gives up trying to buy a gun for criminal purposes,” said Manown of the NRA. “It just defies reason.”

The NRA would support increased funding and staffing for the ATF if additional resources were also given to other layers of the judicial system — courts and prosecutors, Manown said.

- Even without more agents, authorities are poised to start cracking down on illegal gun buyers.

“We’re looking at a couple of really bad actors,” Marianos said.

Most are felons with recent drug or domestic violence convictions, recent enough to know they’re forbidden from owning guns.

Already, Marianos’ gun unit is slapping federal charges on suspects who would have been ignored a year ago, or faced less serious state charges.

Take Richard Allen Cook, 23, and Deborah Ann Cook, 35.

The husband-and-wife team stole tools and electronics from Wal-Mart, then took them into pawnshops. One would distract the clerk with pawning the stolen items, while the other stole rifles. Sometimes a third person would go along, according to ATF records.

In May, pawnshop cameras captured the scheme.

Agents traced the couple to a motel in Manitou Springs, a town west of Colorado Springs. Investigators determined the couple was selling or trading the stolen guns to drug-dealing gang members, Marianos said.

“They were traveling all over the country doing these scams,” he said.

Both have been convicted of stealing from federally licensed firearms dealers and sentenced to prison.

“In state court, it would be shoplifting,” Marianos said.

In its first eight months, his unit has seized 319 illegal guns and arrested 260 suspects on gun-related felonies.

With three ATF agents and five Colorado Springs police officers, it produced nearly half of all Colorado gun cases Strickland indicted last year.

“The gun is the center; it’s the lightning rod,” Marianos said. “It is used for gang violence, narcotics dealing. Take away the guns, and you take away the power of those kinds of serious, violent career criminals.”

In another 1999 case, the gun unit busted Colorado Springs disc jockey Curtis Scott Henry for buying guns for gang criminals, known as “straw purchases.”

The investigation started with a tip from Mel Bernstein, an El Paso County gun seller, known as “Dragon Man” after his store, Dragon Arms.

Bernstein told agents that suspicious people came in the store to pick out guns, then Henry would show up later and buy them.

“Mel thought something funny was going on … because he sees transactions in cars,” Marianos said.

ATF set up surveillance and watched the deals.

“Henry’s taking orders in the car,” Marianos said.

Agents followed Henry’s car, stopped him and pulled out seven guns, three TEC-9 assault pistols, two .380-caliber handguns and two .45-caliber handguns. They found two more in a search of his house.

Henry, 29, pleaded guilty in federal court to dealing firearms without a license and falsifying federal forms, according to ATF records.

Last week, the Colorado Springs unit seized four guns from a man involved in a gang-related shooting Tuesday. No one was hit, so the state charges are not very stiff.

But when the gun unit followed up by searching the man’s house, they found four guns, including an SKS assault rifle and a sawed-off shotgun with an obliterated serial number, a federal crime.

“He’s an example of a guy I’d prioritize far above the guy trying to go into Mr. Pawn and buy a gun. Because not only do they have a gun, they’re using it,” Marianos said.

Authorities are forming a similar gun unit in Denver.

Three Denver police officers and two ATF agents are dedicated to following the guns used in metro-area crimes and building federal cases around them, as Marianos’ group is doing.

“The pro-gun people don’t have a leg to stand on with this unit,” Marianos said. “We’re doing everything that the NRA, the politicians, the community wants.”

Contact Carla Crowder at (303) 892-2742 or [email protected]

January 16, 2000