http://www.denverpost.com/news/news0702g.htm
Gun-dealer list packs surprises
By David Olinger
Denver Post Staff Writer
July 2, 2000 - A federal agency has licensed dozens of homes to sell firearms in Colorado cities that claim to prohibit retail gun sales in residential areas.
Homeowners throughout the Denver area have registered single-family houses on quiet streets as gun shops. None is calling for background checks on large numbers of gun customers, according to state records. But together, they have sold hundreds of guns over the last two years.
A Denver Post survey found that in Denver and four suburbs alone, about 40 residences are licensed to deal guns, including a house two doors from an elementary school playground in Aurora.
Some residential gun dealers see no zoning violation in an occasional visit from a customer to an unadvertised home business. Others who have licensed their homes as gun shops say they sell only at gun shows or have used their license merely to buy guns for themselves.
Officials in Denver and neighboring cities were surprised to learn these businesses exist. Aside from some gunsmiths - a permitted home occupation requiring a federal license - they say they were unaware the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had approved gun businesses at any homes in their cities.
"It certainly looks bad," Aurora assistant city attorney Rob Werking said after reviewing a list of a dozen residential locations in his city licensed to sell firearms.
"A home in a neighborhood is not supposed to be Gart Brothers."
A Post examination of more than 1,600 firearms licenses in Colorado also found gun businesses in some unexpected commercial locations.
In downtown Denver, the 17th-floor penthouse of a financial services company is licensed as a gun shop. So is a room leased by a state administrative law judge in a 13th-floor suite of law offices. A brake shop, a printing shop, an auto trim supply store and a second law office also deal guns in Denver.
In Aurora, an unattended self-service car wash holds a gun dealer's license and is registered with the state to call for customer background checks from that location.
Elsewhere in Colorado, a college bookstore in Trinidad, a Durango airport facility and a Longmont osteopath sell guns with federal licenses. The statewide list of approved firearms dealers ranges from ordinary gun and pawn shops to rural gas stations, a dog kennel, a Boulder bank and an accountant's office in the Jefferson County Association of Realtors building.
ATF officials say Congress gives them little discretion in the issuance of firearms licenses. If the applicant is eligible to own guns, states an intention to sell guns and has a legal business location, the license must be granted.
"We've had mortuaries - what do you do at a mortuary with a gun?" said Tom Crone, who directs ATF licensing and inspection programs in Colorado and four neighboring states.
But "if there's no legal prohibition, it matters not where it's located. We can't make restrictions up just because we think it's odd," he added. "If the locals say it is not prohibited, you could get a brake job and a shotgun."
Crone was not sure why homes in Colorado are licensed to sell guns where local officials say retail sales are prohibited. When Congress required gun dealerships to meet state and local laws in 1994, ATF undertook a three-year program to check every license applicant and renewal for compliance.
But "we may have overlooked some," Crone said, or cities may have "grandfathered" some home gun businesses.
Kent Cousins, deputy chief of ATF firearms programs in Washington, said the bureau has worked hard - and successfully - to reduce home gun businesses in cities barring residential sales and to weed out people who get firearms licenses solely to shop for themselves at wholesale prices.
The number of federal firearms licenses has declined dramatically since 1992, when there were more licensed gun dealers than gas stations in the United States, threefourths of them at residential locations. Nationally, the number of gun licenses has plummeted from a peak of 284,000 to about 100,000.
Yet a recently published ATF survey found that residences still account for 56 percent of all dealer licenses, and almost one-third of its licensed gun dealers hadn't sold a gun in a year.
Colorado Bureau of Investigation records show a similar pattern. Nearly half the people registered to sell guns have called for background checks on three or fewer customers in the last two years. Thirty percent never have called, presumably because they are selling no guns.
The ATF survey, Operation Snapshot 2000, also found that barely 10 percent of its retail gun licenses are held by conventional gun businesses.
Among the 44 percent of licensed gun dealers who had commercial locations, one-fourth "were gun shops or other shops whose primary business was sporting goods, hardware or the like," the agency reported. "The remainder were located in businesses such as funeral homes or auto parts stores, and other businesses not normally associated with a gun business." The agency called its finding that 31 percent of licensed dealers are not selling guns "troubling."
That's because agency inspectors, who managed to check just 5 percent of licensed dealers for compliance with gun laws in 1998, cannot easily differentiate the home dealer who rarely sells a gun from the dealer peddling hundreds of guns without background checks to anonymous customers.
A case in point: In Colorado, James "Trader Jim" Gowda sold thousands of guns as "private" weapons while his Arvada home was licensed as a gun shop for almost two decades, according to an ATF agent's affidavit. Arvada prohibits retail businesses in homes.
When The Denver Post reported in June that Gowda, accused in federal court of selling guns illegally, still had a license to sell guns from his house, Arvada zoning officials checked with their police department, which gets a copy of each firearms license application.
Six other houses in Arvada were licensed to deal guns. The city notified each homeowner that gun sales were not allowed.
If you apply for a gun dealer's license, the federal form requires you to list business hours, state whether your business will be open to the general public and certify, under penalty of perjury, that selling guns "is not prohibited by state or local law at the premises."
You may not license a prohibited location by saying you intend to sell only at gun shows. Your business premises must be a legal place to sell guns.
Those are the rules. In practice, the interpretations of "open for business" vary greatly.
Nobody works at the car wash at 1151 S. Buckley Road in Aurora. It's a self-service, coin-operated car wash, with one unusual feature. It has a federal license to deal guns.
"I've only sold two - ever," said Steven Lubbers, the car wash owner, and "I took them to the car wash. The exchange was made at the car wash." Lubbers doubts he will renew his gun license when it expires later this year - "I guess they don't license holders to just be buying things for themselves any more," he explained - but added that a federal inspector had personally approved his car wash as a gun shop.
Crone, the ATF official, said he was told the car wash was licensed for gun sales after Aurora's zoning commission stated it had no objections.
Lubbers said he transferred his firearms license to the car wash when he moved from Parker because Aurora did not allow gun sales from houses. Yet 12 houses in Aurora, plus half a dozen others just outside the city limits in Arapahoe County, do have federal licenses to sell guns.
One is the home of James Acri, two doors down from a playground entrance to Arkansas Elementary School. CBI records show 13 background checks on gun customers from his house in the two-year period ending March 23.
Acri, who has a stone and tile business, said he stocks no inventory and sells high-quality guns by custom order only.
"I'm a responsible guy," he said. "I try to follow the rules." By appointment only
Lynn Butler, the owner of a three-bedroom house several blocks away, also sells guns with a federal license. He believes he has found a loophole in Aurora's zoning ordinance, permitting retail sales "by prior individual invitation,"
that allows a home gun business.
"You can have it by appointment only, which is how this business is run," Butler said.
Werking, the assistant city attorney, questioned how a house open by appointment only could qualify under federal law as a gun store. Crone responded that federal regulations permit firearms businesses, including residences, to be open to the public by appointment only.
In Denver, three homes licensed as firearms dealerships belong to a gunsmith, an engraver and a gun writer, who sell no weapons but need the license to receive, ship and work on other people's guns.
A fourth license was issued to a small white house just south of the University of Denver. Charles Winter, the homeowner, said he has sold guns for 45 years. "The paperwork is done here, but the gun sales are only at gun shows," he said. "I don't want the wrong kind of people coming here." Winter, who is in his 70s, guessed he might have sold a dozen guns in the last two years, but could not recall when he last went to a gun show. CBI records indicate Winter has not called for a background check since 1998.
In downtown Denver, two gun dealerships have been licensed on upper floors of office towers.
One belongs to Smith & Company of Colorado, an insurance and financial planning firm in the penthouse of 1801 Broadway. It has a subsidiary, Crosshair Firearms, that company director Robert Smith said caters to the client looking for a customized pistol or an $8,000 sporting shotgun. "The only thing we know about the Saturday Night Special is the blueplate dinner," he said.
The other belongs to Art Staliwe, a full-time administrative law judge who hears utility cases for the state Public Utilities Commission. Staliwe was one of several hundred people forced to give up a residential gun sales license after Denver zoning inspectors swept the city in 1994. Now his gun dealership occupies a room on the 13th floor of 410 17th St., in a suite of private law offices.
Staliwe said he keeps the license mostly as "an insurance policy," in case he needs to order a specialized firearm from another state. He has, however, called for background checks on half a dozen gun customers, according to CBI records.
Denver zoning administrator Kent Strapko, after reviewing zoning maps, declared that gun sales are a permitted business in those downtown towers.
In Lakewood, 11 houses are licensed as gun dealerships. One belongs to Floyd Vanderpool, who called the state for background checks on 20 gun customers in two years.
"I'm primarily a gunsmith. Firearm sales is just kind of incidental to being a gunsmith," he said, adding that he also sells only by appointment.
The Lakewood home occupation ordinance, unlike Aurora's, appears to prohibit retail gun sales without exception. It spells out what occupations and retail sales can be permitted in homes. Gunsmithing is. Gun sales are not.
"You can't have people coming to and from your home to buy guns," said Vincent Harris, Lakewood's zoning enforcement chief.
In Littleton, home of ATF's licensing offices in Colorado, three houses have been licensed as gun stores. "We don't allow retail sales out of homes," said Denise Naegle, the city's community development director. When a city inspector checked, two of the three homeowners claimed they had relinquished those licenses.
Elsewhere in Colorado, gun dealer licenses have been combined with a variety of businesses and services.
In Longmont, for example, guns can be purchased at AAA Radiator or the office of Dr. Craig Bereznoff, a family practitioner of osteopathic medicine.
Bereznoff, a commander in the Navy Reserves, said he stocks no guns at the office but makes occasional sales there. He got into the business because "I have a lot of friends and family in law enforcement," he said, "and they were getting ripped off by other licensed dealers." He sees no conflict between the medical services and retail products sold from his office. "I happen to be one of those people who believe that handguns save lives," he said.
In Durango, the business that sells fuel and headgear to private pilots landing at the local airport also sells a few guns. "It's not a real widespread thing," Durango Air Services operator Don Watkins said. "We just order if somebody wants to order." In Trinidad, the Trek Inn Bookstore at Trinidad State Junior College sells textbooks, sweatshirts and guns to the student body. CBI records show 74 background checks on gun customers at the college-owned bookstore in the last two years. Federal records show one multiple-handgun purchase in 1997 at the same bookstore.
Dan Nuschy, the bookstore director, said almost all the guns were purchased by students in gunsmithing classes, who are required to build a gun as part of the course.
Faculty members also can place orders at what Nuschy acknowledges is an unusual location for gun sales. "We might be the only college bookstore in the nation with a firearms license," he said.
Copyright 2000 The Denver Post.
Gun-dealer list packs surprises
By David Olinger
Denver Post Staff Writer
July 2, 2000 - A federal agency has licensed dozens of homes to sell firearms in Colorado cities that claim to prohibit retail gun sales in residential areas.
Homeowners throughout the Denver area have registered single-family houses on quiet streets as gun shops. None is calling for background checks on large numbers of gun customers, according to state records. But together, they have sold hundreds of guns over the last two years.
A Denver Post survey found that in Denver and four suburbs alone, about 40 residences are licensed to deal guns, including a house two doors from an elementary school playground in Aurora.
Some residential gun dealers see no zoning violation in an occasional visit from a customer to an unadvertised home business. Others who have licensed their homes as gun shops say they sell only at gun shows or have used their license merely to buy guns for themselves.
Officials in Denver and neighboring cities were surprised to learn these businesses exist. Aside from some gunsmiths - a permitted home occupation requiring a federal license - they say they were unaware the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had approved gun businesses at any homes in their cities.
"It certainly looks bad," Aurora assistant city attorney Rob Werking said after reviewing a list of a dozen residential locations in his city licensed to sell firearms.
"A home in a neighborhood is not supposed to be Gart Brothers."
A Post examination of more than 1,600 firearms licenses in Colorado also found gun businesses in some unexpected commercial locations.
In downtown Denver, the 17th-floor penthouse of a financial services company is licensed as a gun shop. So is a room leased by a state administrative law judge in a 13th-floor suite of law offices. A brake shop, a printing shop, an auto trim supply store and a second law office also deal guns in Denver.
In Aurora, an unattended self-service car wash holds a gun dealer's license and is registered with the state to call for customer background checks from that location.
Elsewhere in Colorado, a college bookstore in Trinidad, a Durango airport facility and a Longmont osteopath sell guns with federal licenses. The statewide list of approved firearms dealers ranges from ordinary gun and pawn shops to rural gas stations, a dog kennel, a Boulder bank and an accountant's office in the Jefferson County Association of Realtors building.
ATF officials say Congress gives them little discretion in the issuance of firearms licenses. If the applicant is eligible to own guns, states an intention to sell guns and has a legal business location, the license must be granted.
"We've had mortuaries - what do you do at a mortuary with a gun?" said Tom Crone, who directs ATF licensing and inspection programs in Colorado and four neighboring states.
But "if there's no legal prohibition, it matters not where it's located. We can't make restrictions up just because we think it's odd," he added. "If the locals say it is not prohibited, you could get a brake job and a shotgun."
Crone was not sure why homes in Colorado are licensed to sell guns where local officials say retail sales are prohibited. When Congress required gun dealerships to meet state and local laws in 1994, ATF undertook a three-year program to check every license applicant and renewal for compliance.
But "we may have overlooked some," Crone said, or cities may have "grandfathered" some home gun businesses.
Kent Cousins, deputy chief of ATF firearms programs in Washington, said the bureau has worked hard - and successfully - to reduce home gun businesses in cities barring residential sales and to weed out people who get firearms licenses solely to shop for themselves at wholesale prices.
The number of federal firearms licenses has declined dramatically since 1992, when there were more licensed gun dealers than gas stations in the United States, threefourths of them at residential locations. Nationally, the number of gun licenses has plummeted from a peak of 284,000 to about 100,000.
Yet a recently published ATF survey found that residences still account for 56 percent of all dealer licenses, and almost one-third of its licensed gun dealers hadn't sold a gun in a year.
Colorado Bureau of Investigation records show a similar pattern. Nearly half the people registered to sell guns have called for background checks on three or fewer customers in the last two years. Thirty percent never have called, presumably because they are selling no guns.
The ATF survey, Operation Snapshot 2000, also found that barely 10 percent of its retail gun licenses are held by conventional gun businesses.
Among the 44 percent of licensed gun dealers who had commercial locations, one-fourth "were gun shops or other shops whose primary business was sporting goods, hardware or the like," the agency reported. "The remainder were located in businesses such as funeral homes or auto parts stores, and other businesses not normally associated with a gun business." The agency called its finding that 31 percent of licensed dealers are not selling guns "troubling."
That's because agency inspectors, who managed to check just 5 percent of licensed dealers for compliance with gun laws in 1998, cannot easily differentiate the home dealer who rarely sells a gun from the dealer peddling hundreds of guns without background checks to anonymous customers.
A case in point: In Colorado, James "Trader Jim" Gowda sold thousands of guns as "private" weapons while his Arvada home was licensed as a gun shop for almost two decades, according to an ATF agent's affidavit. Arvada prohibits retail businesses in homes.
When The Denver Post reported in June that Gowda, accused in federal court of selling guns illegally, still had a license to sell guns from his house, Arvada zoning officials checked with their police department, which gets a copy of each firearms license application.
Six other houses in Arvada were licensed to deal guns. The city notified each homeowner that gun sales were not allowed.
If you apply for a gun dealer's license, the federal form requires you to list business hours, state whether your business will be open to the general public and certify, under penalty of perjury, that selling guns "is not prohibited by state or local law at the premises."
You may not license a prohibited location by saying you intend to sell only at gun shows. Your business premises must be a legal place to sell guns.
Those are the rules. In practice, the interpretations of "open for business" vary greatly.
Nobody works at the car wash at 1151 S. Buckley Road in Aurora. It's a self-service, coin-operated car wash, with one unusual feature. It has a federal license to deal guns.
"I've only sold two - ever," said Steven Lubbers, the car wash owner, and "I took them to the car wash. The exchange was made at the car wash." Lubbers doubts he will renew his gun license when it expires later this year - "I guess they don't license holders to just be buying things for themselves any more," he explained - but added that a federal inspector had personally approved his car wash as a gun shop.
Crone, the ATF official, said he was told the car wash was licensed for gun sales after Aurora's zoning commission stated it had no objections.
Lubbers said he transferred his firearms license to the car wash when he moved from Parker because Aurora did not allow gun sales from houses. Yet 12 houses in Aurora, plus half a dozen others just outside the city limits in Arapahoe County, do have federal licenses to sell guns.
One is the home of James Acri, two doors down from a playground entrance to Arkansas Elementary School. CBI records show 13 background checks on gun customers from his house in the two-year period ending March 23.
Acri, who has a stone and tile business, said he stocks no inventory and sells high-quality guns by custom order only.
"I'm a responsible guy," he said. "I try to follow the rules." By appointment only
Lynn Butler, the owner of a three-bedroom house several blocks away, also sells guns with a federal license. He believes he has found a loophole in Aurora's zoning ordinance, permitting retail sales "by prior individual invitation,"
that allows a home gun business.
"You can have it by appointment only, which is how this business is run," Butler said.
Werking, the assistant city attorney, questioned how a house open by appointment only could qualify under federal law as a gun store. Crone responded that federal regulations permit firearms businesses, including residences, to be open to the public by appointment only.
In Denver, three homes licensed as firearms dealerships belong to a gunsmith, an engraver and a gun writer, who sell no weapons but need the license to receive, ship and work on other people's guns.
A fourth license was issued to a small white house just south of the University of Denver. Charles Winter, the homeowner, said he has sold guns for 45 years. "The paperwork is done here, but the gun sales are only at gun shows," he said. "I don't want the wrong kind of people coming here." Winter, who is in his 70s, guessed he might have sold a dozen guns in the last two years, but could not recall when he last went to a gun show. CBI records indicate Winter has not called for a background check since 1998.
In downtown Denver, two gun dealerships have been licensed on upper floors of office towers.
One belongs to Smith & Company of Colorado, an insurance and financial planning firm in the penthouse of 1801 Broadway. It has a subsidiary, Crosshair Firearms, that company director Robert Smith said caters to the client looking for a customized pistol or an $8,000 sporting shotgun. "The only thing we know about the Saturday Night Special is the blueplate dinner," he said.
The other belongs to Art Staliwe, a full-time administrative law judge who hears utility cases for the state Public Utilities Commission. Staliwe was one of several hundred people forced to give up a residential gun sales license after Denver zoning inspectors swept the city in 1994. Now his gun dealership occupies a room on the 13th floor of 410 17th St., in a suite of private law offices.
Staliwe said he keeps the license mostly as "an insurance policy," in case he needs to order a specialized firearm from another state. He has, however, called for background checks on half a dozen gun customers, according to CBI records.
Denver zoning administrator Kent Strapko, after reviewing zoning maps, declared that gun sales are a permitted business in those downtown towers.
In Lakewood, 11 houses are licensed as gun dealerships. One belongs to Floyd Vanderpool, who called the state for background checks on 20 gun customers in two years.
"I'm primarily a gunsmith. Firearm sales is just kind of incidental to being a gunsmith," he said, adding that he also sells only by appointment.
The Lakewood home occupation ordinance, unlike Aurora's, appears to prohibit retail gun sales without exception. It spells out what occupations and retail sales can be permitted in homes. Gunsmithing is. Gun sales are not.
"You can't have people coming to and from your home to buy guns," said Vincent Harris, Lakewood's zoning enforcement chief.
In Littleton, home of ATF's licensing offices in Colorado, three houses have been licensed as gun stores. "We don't allow retail sales out of homes," said Denise Naegle, the city's community development director. When a city inspector checked, two of the three homeowners claimed they had relinquished those licenses.
Elsewhere in Colorado, gun dealer licenses have been combined with a variety of businesses and services.
In Longmont, for example, guns can be purchased at AAA Radiator or the office of Dr. Craig Bereznoff, a family practitioner of osteopathic medicine.
Bereznoff, a commander in the Navy Reserves, said he stocks no guns at the office but makes occasional sales there. He got into the business because "I have a lot of friends and family in law enforcement," he said, "and they were getting ripped off by other licensed dealers." He sees no conflict between the medical services and retail products sold from his office. "I happen to be one of those people who believe that handguns save lives," he said.
In Durango, the business that sells fuel and headgear to private pilots landing at the local airport also sells a few guns. "It's not a real widespread thing," Durango Air Services operator Don Watkins said. "We just order if somebody wants to order." In Trinidad, the Trek Inn Bookstore at Trinidad State Junior College sells textbooks, sweatshirts and guns to the student body. CBI records show 74 background checks on gun customers at the college-owned bookstore in the last two years. Federal records show one multiple-handgun purchase in 1997 at the same bookstore.
Dan Nuschy, the bookstore director, said almost all the guns were purchased by students in gunsmithing classes, who are required to build a gun as part of the course.
Faculty members also can place orders at what Nuschy acknowledges is an unusual location for gun sales. "We might be the only college bookstore in the nation with a firearms license," he said.
Copyright 2000 The Denver Post.
