trying to do the right thing

and enforce the law, but a handful are negligent”

“The vast majority of gun dealers are

Hopkins says his salesmen simply ignore some scruffily dressed young window shoppers, and “definitely if they smell of weed.” Suspect browsers typically leave the store without being served, he says.

That’s not exactly what happens when two twentysomething men in drooping trousers and backward baseball caps ask to look at Glocks. Salesman Alec Wilson shows them the guns and answers their questions. “That’s a cool motherf---ing gun,” one says about a .40-caliber display gun. Wilson nods in a neutral fashion.

The exchange takes a turn, however, when one of the shoppers asks that an informal background check be done on him, “just to see if I pass.” At that point Wilson shakes his head, puts away the display weapons, and indicates there will be no sale. The shoppers, grumbling and looking disappointed, depart empty-handed.

Wilson tells me later that people seek to test the background-check system on a daily basis, presumably to see whether some infraction from their past gets flagged. The rule is that they get sent away, the salesman says.

But at least one questionable customer is allowed to buy: a man who enters the store and without pausing or looking around expresses interest in acquiring three identical Smith & Wesson 9mm pistols. He volunteers that one gun is for him, one for his father, and the third for his brother. Told that each prospective owner should come in on their own and go through the background check, the customer explains that he already has a Nevada concealed-carry permit, which entitles him by law to buy weapons without a point-of-sale background check.

To get a concealed-carry permit, an applicant goes through a more thorough investigation and has to complete an eight-hour safety course. Ultimately, the customer compromises and walks out of the store with two Smith & Wessons. But to my eye that still seems to be a violation of the 4473 requirement that the purchase is being made for the “actual buyer of the firearm.”

Hopkins disagrees: “I view that as a legitimate sale because the man has a concealed-carry permit.” He goes on to note that the customer had to fill out a “multiple sale” form, which informs federal and local authorities of any purchase of more than one gun at a time.

Recently, the store made a mistake that drew attention from the ATF. In mid-December, a man in his 50s sought to buy a rifle and a handgun but encountered a delay on his background check. Later the same day, the man’s wife attempted to buy the same two firearms. Aware that the couple was trying again, Fortino nevertheless put through a background check for the wife, Hopkins says. She encountered a delay, as well.

A week later, the government denied both husband and wife permission to buy the two weapons. The guns never left the store, but “Rocky should not have done the second background check, given the circumstances,” Hopkins concedes.

The situation comes to light when a pair of ATF agents shows up at the store as part of their investigation of the husband and wife. The agency had flagged as suspicious a pair of denied background checks to people with the same last name.

“The good news is the system worked,” says Hopkins. He adds that the ATF called him in for a meeting he describes as “shock therapy to make sure we understood we’d screwed up.” To ensure it doesn’t happen again, Hopkins says he’s instituting an “inservice training program” to help his employees spot straw purchasing and other improprieties. ATF Special Agent Helen Dunkel declines to comment, saying the agency “is not allowed to confirm any possible investigations.”

“The vast majority of gun dealers are trying to do the right thing and enforce the law, but a handful are negligent about straw purchasing or actively look the other way,” says Jonathan Lowy, legal director at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Using mandatory serial numbers, the ATF can trace guns found at crime scenes back to where they were sold. “Bad apple” stores tend to receive a lot of crime-gun trace inquiries, Lowy says; many stores receive no traces at all. Westside so far hasn’t received a single crime-gun trace during its 18 months in business, according to Hopkins.

For the most part, crime isn’t a gun store problem. Criminals as a rule “don’t stroll into a gun store and fill out a 4473,” Hopkins says. Social science research backs him up. A study published last year by scholars at the University of Chicago and Duke University, who surveyed inmates at Chicago’s Cook County jail, found that criminal offenders rarely obtain guns through formal channels. Just 1 in 10 of the inmates said they purchased their weapons at a gun store or pawnshop. About 70 percent said they got their weapons from friends, family, or street connections, and that firearms routinely passed through multiple owners.

“Background checks won’t catch everything,” says Hopkins. Under the current system, only FFLs are obliged to do the checks. “Private” sellers who operate at gun shows—or from their kitchen tables or via the Internet—don’t have to follow the rules, a gap sometimes referred to loosely as the gun-show loophole. In a soon-to-be-published survey of more than 2,000 gun owners, researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that 40 percent said they’d most recently acquired a firearm without a background check from a non-FFL.

Like many FFL holders, Hopkins would have no objection to universal background checks for all gun transfers. But the NRA does, and, as a result, the loophole will likely persist for a good long while. Meantime, Hopkins expects the debate over the issue in the 2016 presidential election to drive more sales at Westside Armory. He says he doesn’t relish the candidacy of a Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders, the two Democratic hopefuls, inspiring shopping sprees, but business is business, after all. <BW>