TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/81/81.19

Text File | 1992-09-25 | 4KB | 72 lines

                                                                                April 13, 1981

NATION

Cheap Gun, Will Travel


The origins of the .22-cal. revolver that was used to shoot
President Reagan are in Sontheim, West Germany. A picturesque
town built along a tributary of the Danube. Sontheim is the
home of Rohm GmbH, a 74-year-old firm that makes drilling
equipment and cheap handgun parts. West Germans have little use
for Rohm weapons. The country's gun ownership laws are strict,
and the relatively few people who do qualify to possess handguns
tend to choose better-made and more expensive models. Thus,
most Rohm gun parts--perhaps $1 million worth a year, although
company officials refuse to be exact--are shipped through Bremen
and Hamburg to the U.S., where there is one pistol for every
four citizens, and where there is a flourishing market for
cheap "Saturday night specials."  Last year the U.S. imported
298,689 foreign handguns, most of them from Italy and West
Germany, and 3.1 million gun parts.

American law closely regulates the importing of entire guns.
But there are far fewer restrictions on bringing in gun parts
that then inserted into American-made frames. RG Industries,
Inc., which is partly controlled by Heinrich and Gunter Rohm of
the German firm, employs about 200 people to do that kind of
assembly work at a shabby white concrete building in the garment
district of northwest Miami. The cheap alloy frame is smoothed
with a file and then placed on an assembly line where the barrel
and German parts are inserted. Then the metal in tinted a dark
blue. RG Industries last year sold 190,000 such weapons making
it the nation's fifth largest handgun producer.

Because of its short (1 3/4-in) barrel the model RG 14 revolver
that Hinckley used cannot be sold legally in the Miami area.
The one that Hinckley bought, serial number L731332 was shipped
by Southern Gun distributors of nearby Opa-Locka, Fla., directly
to Rocky's Pawn Shop on Elm Street in Dallas. This cluttered
emporium, only a quarter of a mile from the site where President
John Kennedy was shot 17 years ago, has a sticker on the door
that reads GUNS DON'T CAUSE CRIME ANY MORE THAN FLIES CAUSE
GARBAGE. In the window a red, green , blue, and black sign
advertises .22-cal. revolvers for $47.

"Hinckley did everything required to buy a gun," says Isaac
"Rocky" Goldstein, 70, a cigar-chomping, gray-haired man who has
run the shop for 51 years. "People are going to blame us for
selling the gun that shot the President, but we have no way of
knowing . We don't even remember him."  Goldstein, who also
sold the small handguns that were used in a series of gang
shootings in New York City's Chinatown in 1978, has been shaken
by events, however, and now says he is considering getting out
of the gun business.

Hinckley purchased the ammunition that was used at another pawn
shop, this one in Lubbock, Texas. The type of bullet he chose
was interesting--and frightening. The cartridges were
Devastators, make by Bingham Ltd. of Norcross, Ga. These
projectiles, akin to dumdum bullets, contain a small aluminum
canister filled with an explosive compound. They cost at least
twelve times as much as ordinary .22-cal. slugs.

Upon impact the unstable compound is supposed to explode and
fragment the bullet, although most of the ones that Hinckley
shot, including the one that hit Reagan, failed to do so.
Bingham spokesmen say that the Devastator was developed for use
by sky marshals in hijacking cases. By fragmenting, the bullet
would quickly incapacitate a person but would be less likely
than an ordinary bullet to pass through him or to puncture the
outer skin of an airplane. Because of manufacturing
difficulties, the company stopped producing the Devastator last
May.