Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.
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.
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
istillcannotreadyourposts justonebiglongsentenceswithnocapitalizationorpunctuation
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!
Is there even the remotest chance thaat the JBTs are right on this one case?
This store can't account for almost 2 thousand guns.
What's that got to do with this gun dealer?
I'm going to forward him a copy of this article and will post any comments he replies with.
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.
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.
Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.
"...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.
99% of Americans do not support the idiotic Assault Weapons Ban.
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.
Perhaps that is why it was allowed to expire.
Are you accusing Bush of lying when he said he supported it?
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.
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".
Your link is to an online store.
Stating the truth insults a great many, tough.
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