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 cant 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 couldnt 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 ATFs figures dont 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 thats 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 couldnt 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 shops side.
I dont like what theyre doing because its 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 couldnt legally buy guns and straw sales, which is a purchase by a legal buyer who turns the gun over to someone who cant legally buy a gun.
Added *RKBA* as a FR search keyword for this post. You now have an archive.
***Segal said the ATF decided to close Traders after their own hearing in which they used records going back 30 years.***
One of the largest gun shops in Kali, the most populous state. These people were likely selling a thousand or more guns a month. To make the 1700 list of over thirty years of sales all that would have to happen is transposed numbers or a miss-spelled name.
Do note that the "hearing" was ATF only and the store owners were not allowed to rebut any of their "findings".
Also remember that the ATF has changed forms many times over this period. A gun on the "wrong" (out of date) form would also make the list.
I find it disturbing to read comments like "jack booted" etc. when describing ATF agents. These are law enforcement officers charged with doing a difficult and dangerous job. If there is something wrong with the rules and procedures, which they must follow as well, then complaints should be aimed at the rules and procedures, not the agents themselves.
Waco came immediately to my mind also upon reading this story.
There is a ATF training video that has the head of the firearms division admitting to as much as a 50% error rate in NFA records, but ordering agents to testify that the data base is 100% correct.
They actually caught agents shreading cases NFA transfer papers instead of filing them a while back when they were transfering from hard files to computor.
I don't have links at hand but might be able to find them, they have been all over the gunboards the last couple of years.
What ATF JBTs were prosecuted for the unlawful Waco raid? Shooting at women and children?
Be specific.
If i'm not on the list Joe, pls add me.
Thx, 'Pod.
If the boot fits - wear it.
Perhaps it would be easier to be sympathetic to them if they hadn't morphed their job from being glorified tax collectors into overvealous kevlar-wearig ninjas whose main concern is the protection and expansion of their political turf.
Perhaps if they didn't routinely harass, ruin, or kill the innocent.
Perhaps if they actually understood and respected the second ammendment to the Constitution.
Sometimes the truth is disturbing.
It was a Congressman that coined the phase "Jack Booting Thugs" after hearings into the actions of the BATFE...
Ruby Ridge
Waco
LA Confiscations (returned two weeks later after budget hearings)
Las Vegas entrapment attempts
Pennsylvania entrapment attempts
Coercion under color of law
NFA fraud
The NFA laws were put into place after the Revenuers no longer had a job when prohibition ended. Make work for .gov Jack Booted Thugs
Don't forget their "show of force" in Richmond, VA.
There are really too may to list and ATF adds to the list every year.
I've been familiar with two or three dealers that went bankrupt defending themslves. They were never convicted of anything just dragged through court until broke. ATF gets pissed and you pay...
A quote I heard from one dealer he got from the ATF auditors: "We're the ATF, laws or no laws we make the rules."
What was a kneejerk reaction?
Sounds about right.
That House committee hearing on the ATF's antics included lots of testimony as to this list of abuses. Guess how confident I am that we'll see any change as a result of it?
The BATFags do not even have constitutional authority to exist. Defending gun-grabbing is not an advisable thing to do here on FR.
yeah i got that...
If the President was pro-gun and understood the AWB then he never would have made this statement.
I have purchased some items from Traders over the years; from what I could see, all was in order. I have copies of the paperwork. That said, its clear that the investigation does have at least, in part, political motivation. The City of Oakland, Alameda County, and the Cal DOJ have been trying for years to close down Traders (and to stop gun shows from happening in Alameda County) as well as many other FFL retail stores. This does not appear to be limited to California, but is happening around the country, so there is a large federal hand in it. This whole thing started during the Clinton Administration, and continues almost unabated. Before 1992, there were around 27,000 FFL holders in Cal; after 1998 (or so) there were about 3,000 - a 90% reduction.
Correct on both points.
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