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Traders Gun Shop Told to Close June 1(more jackbooted batfe abuse)
http://www.ebpublishing.com/ ^ | 5 18 06 | Jim Knowles

Posted on 05/18/2006 6:22:58 AM PDT by freepatriot32

Traders Sports, one of the biggest gun dealers in the state, hopes a hearing in U.S. District Court next week will keep them in business.

Traders has been under scrutiny for several years by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), which is trying to shut down the gun dealer. The ATF decided to revoke Traders gun permit on June 1. After an audit in 2003, the ATF claims that Traders can’t account for 1,767 weapons, and that guns sold at Traders turn up in crimes at an alarming rate.

ATF spokeswoman Marti McKee said she couldn’t comment on the hearing, which is coming up next Thursday, May 25 in San Francisco before Judge Vaughn Walker.

Traders’ owner Tony Cucchiara also declined to comment on the hearing, deferring questions to his lawyer, Malcolm Segal.

The gun shop claims the ATF’s figures don’t add up because of human error, filling out paperwork wrong. They also say the ATF is unfairly targeting the store and going beyond reasonable annual inspections.

“The law allows one inspection a year — that’s a law passed by Congress — and the ATF inspected twice in one year,” said Segal.

Segal said the ATF decided to close Traders after their own hearing in which they used records going back 30 years.

“The errors they claim are really human errors,” Segal said. “Any time there are thousands of transactions with serial numbers in dozens of digits, there is always bound to be human error.”

The ATF initially claimed in its audit that Traders couldn’t account for 7,477 weapons, but the number in the final account was reduced to 1,767. Customers going to Traders this week tended to be on the gun shop’s side.

“I don’t like what they’re doing because it’s a good store,” said Sonny Verde, who comes from Marin County to shop at Traders. “They should go after the criminals not the gun stores.”

Last week the U.S. Department of Justice filed papers saying that guns sold by Traders have been recovered in a crime at a rate of nearly one per day.

About one in every eight guns sold by Traders between 2003 and 2005 has wound up in a crime, the second highest number of guns traced to crimes of any dealer in the nation, according to the Department of Justice.

In 1994, Muckraker magazine featured a story on Traders, listing violations found by the ATF going back to 1970, including sales to people who couldn’t legally buy guns and “straw sales,” which is a purchase by a legal buyer who turns the gun over to someone who can’t legally buy a gun.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; US: California
KEYWORDS: abuse; atf; banglist; batfe; close; donutwatch; govwatch; gunshop; jackbooted; jackbootedthugs; jbt; june1; libertarians; more; rkba; to; told; traders
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To: RonF

Would you care to guess how many machine guns ATFE-NFA cannot account for?

ATFE-NFA are responsible for maintaining the NFRTR, which records all the legally owned NFA items in the country. It was unconstitutionally established in 1934, and it's accuracy has been questionable from the beginning.

NFA items records are supposed to be updated every time the item changes ownership, it is the ATFE-NFA's job to keep those records.
ATFE-NFA still shows thousands of NFA items as still being registered to the same person who originally registered them in 1934!

ATFE-NFA have the entire resources of the federal government at their disposal, yet audit's reveal the NFRTR has an error rate of about 5%!

When do we close down the ATFE due to THEIR shoddy record keeping?

Many more details, including congressional testimony confirming my contention above, can be found at http://www.nfaoa.org


41 posted on 05/18/2006 8:54:48 AM PDT by Richard-SIA ("The natural progress of things is for government to gain ground and for liberty to yield" JEFFERSON)
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To: freepatriot32

istillcannotreadyourposts justonebiglongsentenceswithnocapitalizationorpunctuation


42 posted on 05/18/2006 8:55:44 AM PDT by Cobra64 (All we get are lame ideas from Republicans and lame criticism from dems about those lame ideas.)
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To: mountainlyons

They cannot account for for $1,000,000 they received just two years ago, money SPECIFICALLY appropriated by congress for the sole task of correcting their own records!


43 posted on 05/18/2006 8:57:43 AM PDT by Richard-SIA ("The natural progress of things is for government to gain ground and for liberty to yield" JEFFERSON)
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To: TXnMA

Is there even the remotest chance thaat the JBTs are right on this one case?



In the absence of evidence that any of these "missing" guns ended up in criminal hands suggesting a pipeline or pattern, no.

Typos don't kill, and the ATF record for accurate record keeping is abysmal compared to those they regulate.


44 posted on 05/18/2006 9:02:51 AM PDT by Atlas Sneezed (Your FRiendly FReeper Patent Attorney)
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To: justshutupandtakeit

This store can't account for almost 2 thousand guns.



That's ATF spin.

There is a possible paperwork/accounting/typo rate of maybe 1%, with no evidence that anything was stolen, or passed on to criminals.

Can you prove all the tax deductions you took in 1978? Are there gaps in your paperwork?


45 posted on 05/18/2006 9:06:09 AM PDT by Atlas Sneezed (Your FRiendly FReeper Patent Attorney)
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To: Richard-SIA

What's that got to do with this gun dealer?


46 posted on 05/18/2006 9:17:54 AM PDT by RonF
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To: freepatriot32
My brother-in-law owns a gun shop and I can tell you that "we got the digits misplaced" or "our employees copied the number down wrong" just doesn't cut it, nor should it. He goes through all of his paperwork at the end of the day just to check against stuff like that - he's had many guns from his shops used in crimes and suicides over the years, but he was always able to give registration information to the authorities when they came by. If this gun shop has been selling a bunch of guns without sufficient paperwork, they deserve to be shut down. I'm sure my brother-in-law wants to get home to his family when the shop closes, but he stays at work to double-check everything that was sold that day. It's not unreasonable to expect that a gun shop keep accurate records of the firearms they sell.

I'm going to forward him a copy of this article and will post any comments he replies with.

47 posted on 05/18/2006 9:28:46 AM PDT by Stone Mountain
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To: RonF

The American sense of fairness and equality under the law requires that ATFE not be allowed to pronounce others as deserving to lose their business for poor record keeping when ATFE's own records are WORSE!

As KKKalifornia has found ways to drive ever more dealers out of business Traders has become the only dealer left for a large area.

With such a large area to service it is inevitable that some of their customers will be unsavory, that is not traders fault, all they can do is follow the procedures as best they can.
After all, doesn't the "Brady Law" ensure that no prohibited person would ever lie on a form in order to get a gun from a dealer?

Would YOU like to be held legally responsible for every form every employee you ever worked with ever filled out?

It is time for the entire ATFE/Gun Control sham to be repealed.
Punish the damn criminals for the crimes they actually commit, instead of just chasing the contrived easy picking's to be found in harassing business people!

This case is just more KKKalifornia PC gestapo at work, and they are using ATFE to do it.


48 posted on 05/18/2006 9:48:38 AM PDT by Richard-SIA ("The natural progress of things is for government to gain ground and for liberty to yield" JEFFERSON)
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To: freepatriot32
From my brother-in-law who owns a gun shop in Arizona:

There are some guns on my books for which I can't account, but not on anywhere near on that scale.

It's also unusual to have that many crime-scene gun traces, too....one in eight? Ours is maybe one in one hundred, or so.

With that number of guns for which they can't account, and the number of traces, I'd say that this 'Trader's' has some serious operational problems. ATF, in my experience, doesn't go on many fishing expeditions....but they WILL try to close down FFLs who demonstrate problems on that scale.

49 posted on 05/18/2006 10:04:18 AM PDT by Stone Mountain
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To: freepatriot32; Abram; albertp; AlexandriaDuke; Allosaurs_r_us; Americanwolf; ...
Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.
50 posted on 05/18/2006 11:53:01 AM PDT by traviskicks (http://www.neoperspectives.com/gasoline_and_government.htm)
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To: scory

"...given the fact that it is one of the few large gun dealers still in business in the area..."

Now we know why the ATF is working so hard on this case.


51 posted on 05/18/2006 12:22:51 PM PDT by CSM (Putting government in charge of morality is like putting pedophiles in charge of children.Protagoras)
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To: justshutupandtakeit
If Bush is not pro gun then 99% of Americans are not pro-gun.

99% of Americans do not support the idiotic Assault Weapons Ban.

52 posted on 05/18/2006 12:29:57 PM PDT by jmc813 (The best mathematical equation I have ever seen: 1 cross + 3 nails= 4 given.)
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To: RonF
My guess would be that the gun manufacturers track who they sell their guns to.

I think that your guess is right on the money. There is full accountability through the entire chain of custody. Of all the things I have lost through my aging, I miss my mind the most.

53 posted on 05/18/2006 12:46:58 PM PDT by GingisK
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To: jmc813

Perhaps that is why it was allowed to expire.


54 posted on 05/18/2006 1:00:29 PM PDT by justshutupandtakeit (If you believe ANYTHING in the Treason Media you are a fool.)
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To: justshutupandtakeit
Perhaps that is why it was allowed to expire.

Are you accusing Bush of lying when he said he supported it?

55 posted on 05/18/2006 1:09:30 PM PDT by jmc813 (The best mathematical equation I have ever seen: 1 cross + 3 nails= 4 given.)
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To: Beelzebubba

Spin? Yeah right. Somehow the other gunshops across the land manage to avoid making such egregious errors and do follow the law. ATF operates under federal law.


56 posted on 05/18/2006 1:17:28 PM PDT by justshutupandtakeit (If you believe ANYTHING in the Treason Media you are a fool.)
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To: driftdiver

Not so idiotic as to Bush is not pro 2d amendment or to believe in the Globaloney crap the kooks try and peddle to the gullible.

As I said "you don't even know what a globalist is".


57 posted on 05/18/2006 1:19:47 PM PDT by justshutupandtakeit (If you believe ANYTHING in the Treason Media you are a fool.)
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To: freepatriot32

Your link is to an online store.


58 posted on 05/18/2006 1:21:58 PM PDT by justshutupandtakeit (If you believe ANYTHING in the Treason Media you are a fool.)
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To: Cobra64

Stating the truth insults a great many, tough.


59 posted on 05/18/2006 1:23:23 PM PDT by justshutupandtakeit (If you believe ANYTHING in the Treason Media you are a fool.)
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To: scory
They are the last one for miles so they are being chased out. Having Oakland right there has contributed to the misuse of the weapons. It is Oakland not Traders that has the problem.
60 posted on 05/18/2006 1:24:57 PM PDT by colonialhk (sooprize sooprize sooprize)
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