TAKING STOCK OF GUNS Some buyers want a website to determine whether weapon is stolen
Eric Delbert, co-owner of L.E.P.D. Firing Range on the Northwest Side, said he and others who buy guns from private citizens have wanted a change for years.
“Our contention has always been if there’s stolen guns out there, not just us, but any individual should have the ability to see if it’s stolen prior to purchasing it,” he said. “People come to a reputable store and they assume they’re buying a gun that hasn’t been stolen, but there are no guarantees in that because there’s nothing we can do to check it.”
L.E.P.D. purchases guns from estate sales and conducts trade-ins for firearms five to 10 times a day, with about 400 used firearms in stock during the holiday season.
Delbert said the only way to check whether a firearm has been reported stolen is to call police and have them come out to take a report and run the firearm’s serial number through a law-enforcement database. That approach, however, isn’t practical, he said.
“It’s not a cure-all for gun violence, but it’s one piece of the puzzle,” Delbert said. “We get frustrated in that so much of this debate is done in the political spectrum and media. This is not a hard thing ... It puts the bad guys on notice that they can’t sell to the gun store to get drug money real quick.”
Delbert said a website or a phone app that could search a gun’s origin would cause those looking to sell firearms they believe to be stolen to take pause before trying to sell those guns at gun shows or through private sales.
“I don’t want to run the risk of the guy across from me saying it is stolen,” he said. “It should reduce those knowingly being sold.”
And though Delbert says he doesn’t believe the selling of stolen firearms is a huge problem, he noted it is hard to know how big the problem actually is because there’s no way to verify how many stolen firearms are changing hands.
About 10,000 guns a year are stolen nationally from gun stores, Delbert said.
Florida has a website where any person can put in a firearm’s serial number and determine whether, based on
Florida law-enforcement records, the gun has been reported stolen. The results come back within seconds, similar to a Google search.
Ohio Rep. Kristin Boggs, a Democrat from Columbus, said the idea of a database is something she would like to learn more about, particularly the infrastructure that Florida used to build and update its database.
“This is definitely something I would be interested in being in support of and trying to figure out what systems need to be built,” Boggs said. “It’s just common sense ... that is a solvable problem.”
Boggs said she doesn’t foresee any potential political holdups for creating a database, which she thinks would be a bipartisan issue. But she did say that funding and technology could become issues.
“This is about sharing information that property has been stolen and what is the appropriate use of that information when it isn’t being held by its legal owner,” she said. “What we have
seen hold up this type of policy is what the cost is to build the infrastructure and the technology so that the people who are purchasing guns are interfacing with the information law enforcement has.”
But with a database, there could be pitfalls, Delbert cautioned. Those using the database would have to know what to do if a firearm comes back as being stolen.
“You’re staring at someone who potentially stole this,” Delbert said. “Are you putting that store or that buyer in harm’s way?”
He said there also would need to be a limit on how far back the records would go, as firearms can change hands multiple times within several years.
“What happens if we get a hit on a gun and the gun was stolen 10 years ago, it’s been transferred multiple times and the guy standing across from you has no idea it’s stolen?” Delbert said. “Is that guy now out of money?”