TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/020689/02068900.019

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 4KB | 64 lines

NATION, Page 24


Running Guns up the Interstate

    The term gunrunning brings to mind images of swift boats
landing rifles on  shadowy and foreign shores. But the gunrunning
that plagues the U.S. these days is more a matter of illicit
firearms stashed in vehicles rolling boldly up interstate highways.
Federal law strictly limits the resale of weapons. However, that
has not stanched a flood of firepower that travels from Southern
states, where guns are quickly and easily bought, to Northern ones,
where sales are more tightly regulated. Firearms bought in gun
shops in Florida, Texas and Virginia -- the three largest supply
states -- fetch top dollar when sold on the black market to drug
dealers, street gangs and assorted thugs in Washington and New York
City.

    "With the huge profits to be made, gunrunners are flooding the
market," laments federal firearms agent Phil Chojnacki in Houston.
"You take off one group, and another springs up." In fact, the
markup on black-market firearms is not bad. A .357-cal. magnum that
sells for $250 in a Dallas gun shop will bring $700 on the streets
of New York. Just $300 will buy a semiautomatic in Florida, which
can be sold at the Northern end of the pipeline for $1,000 or more.

    Drug dealers have been finding the gun trade a nice side
business. In the past two years Jamaican drug gangs, known as
"posses," that run the crack houses in Dallas have moved some 1,200
Southern firearms to other drug dealers in the North. Enterprising
dope shippers can even arrange a "package deal" for their wealthy
Northern buyers: a stolen luxury car that has drugs hidden in the
door panels, with a cache of arms thrown in.

    The driving force behind domestic arms smuggling is the
discrepancy among state laws. Northern states such as New York and
Massachusetts have waiting periods of several weeks on gun
purchases. That gives authorities time to check buyers for a
criminal record and makes it harder for miscreants to get weapons.
Not so in Texas or many parts of the South, such as Florida, South
Carolina and Virginia, where customers need only show a driver's
license or other form of identification that certifies them as
state residents.

    That kind of ID is easily forged by out-of-state buyers.
"People come into a gun shop with a Virginia driver's license,  and
the ink is barely dry," laments George N. Metcalf, Assistant U.S.
Attorney in Richmond. "They buy half a dozen guns with cash, get
into a car with New York license plates, and they are gone." Some
gunrunners prefer to hire one or more "straw buyers," local
Southerners paid as little as $100 for the use of their legitimate
IDs to make the purchases. Through such means, gun smugglers often
buy a dozen weapons or more at a time. Though gun dealers in some
states are required to report multiple purchases, federal agents
say sellers do not always cooperate.

    Stopping this clandestine trade is almost impossible for agents
of the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms. The weapons are transported by car or truck, aboard
trains or stashed in the cargo hold of interstate buses and planes.
Federal agents even uncovered one shipment sent by United Parcel
Service and labeled "sewing-machine parts." Most of the time they
move unimpeded by the kinds of inspections imposed on shipments
from outside the U.S. Until more uniformity can be established
among state gun laws, gun smuggling on the interstates will remain
a flourishing trade.