Firing blanks
Since 2016, less than 1 percent of violations saw loss of licenses
When gun dealers fail inspections or otherwise skirt the law, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has a history of looking the other way.
WASHINGTON — As they inspect the nation’s gun stores, federal investigators regularly find violations of the law, ranging from minor record-keeping errors to illegal sales of firearms. In the most serious cases, such as the sale of a gun to a prohibited buyer, inspectors often recommend that gun dealers lose their licenses.
But that rarely happens. Senior officials at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives regularly overrule their own inspectors, allowing gun dealers who fail inspections to keep their licenses even after they were previously warned to follow the rules, according to interviews with more than half a dozen current and former law enforcement officials and a review of more than 100 inspection reports.
One store was cited for failing to conduct background checks before selling a gun. Another store owner told investigators he actively tried to circumvent gun laws. One threatened an ATF officer, and another sold a gun to a customer who identified as a felon. All were previously cited by the ATF. In each instance, supervisors downgraded recommendations that the stores’ licenses be revoked and instead let them stay open.
Of about 11,000 inspections of licensed firearm dealers in the year starting in October 2016, more than half were cited for violations. Less than 1 percent of all inspections resulted in the loss of a license.
The episodes shed light on the ATF’s delicate role in policing the gun industry, which has historically resisted regulation and holds powerful political sway over the ATF’s appropriators in Congress. Lawmakers set a stringent requirement decades ago for gun inspectors: They must prove that store owners not only violated the law but intended to do so. The bureau has sidestepped the potential legal appeals and political fallout of revoking licenses by trying to work with gun dealers rather than close their stores.
Safest option?
The approach is widely seen by the ATF as the best option to regulate the gun industry without fostering an adversarial relationship, but some in the bureau consider it a compromise that is at best nuanced and at worst unsafe.
“We’re not selling ice cream here,” said Howard Wolfe, who retired from the ATF in 2006 after 36 years on its industry operations side, including as an inspector and supervisor.
The ATF declined repeated requests
“We’re not selling ice cream here. You’re selling something here that if you screw up, somebody can be killed.”
Howard Wolfe, retired ATF supervisor
for comment.
Dozens of the ATF’s inspection reports cited serious, repeated violations. They were obtained via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a nonprofit coalition to combat gun violence, and shared with The New York Times. They are not comprehensive, and continue to be produced on a rolling basis.
That the ATF allowed some stores to stay in business, despite egregious violations, disturbed some gun dealers. If dealers are cited for serious violations such as selling guns to prohibited customers or losing firearms, “then just do everybody a favor. Give them your damn license,” said Ryan Horsley, manager of Red’s Trading Post in Twin Falls, Idaho. Red’s was in danger of losing its license in 2007 over paperwork violations, though Horsley won an appeal and stayed in business.
The vast majority of America’s gun dealers largely comply with federal laws, and the level of violations cited in the ATF’s reports varies widely. Many are basic record-keeping violations born out of the complicated paperwork required to purchase a gun. “You can’t do it 100 percent,” Steve Clark, the owner of Clark Brothers Gun Shop in Warrenton, Va., said of compliance inspections.
For gun dealers to lose their licenses, the ATF must prove they “willfully” violated the Gun Control Act. Violating the law is not enough to justify the loss of a license; inspectors must prove that store owners knew they were acting illegally.
To prove violations were willful, the ATF seeks to establish a record of warnings. In warning letters, senior ATF officials told dealers that violating the Gun Control Act again could jeopardize their license. But a review of ATF records showed that even when stores had received such warnings and continued to violate the law, supervisors let them keep operating.
“We operated in the idea that we’re not in the business of putting people out of business,” said Earl Kleckley, a former director of industry operations in the ATF’s Los Angeles field office. “We have put people out of business, but that was a situation where these business entities had more than one bite of the apple and continued to operate in a violative fashion.”
Added Wolfe: “We used to kind of bend over backward.”
Lack of focus on sellers
One ATF official cited the political environment when asked why the bureau overrules inspectors’ delicensing recommendations. The official cited the 2007 nomination of Michael Sullivan, then the acting director, to be permanent head of the ATF. Republican senators held up the nomination over allegations from constituents, including Red’s Trading Post, that the ATF was too aggressive in its oversight.
The National Rifle Association, the gun industry’s powerful lobbying arm, did not respond to a request for comment.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has pushed prosecutors to more aggressively enforce federal gun laws as part of the Trump administration’s push to reduce violent crime. But prosecutors have focused on gun users, not sellers.
The inspection process is further complicated by laws that govern record-keeping in the gun industry, which forbid the ATF to keep records electronically.