http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf?/newsstories/regional/20000409_ahnguns.html
"Where Are All The Guns?
By John O'Brien
The crinkly document, filled out in 1942, says a 64-year-old man got a license to carry a .38-caliber revolver to protect himself and his home on Fitch Street in Syracuse.
The man's stern, mustachioed face stares out from a thumbprint-size black-and-white photograph attached to the license. It is still valid. As far as Onondaga County and New York state are concerned, the man is alive and well and packing heat.
He would be 122 years old.
And he's not the only one. As many as 4,000 other cases like his are under scrutiny at Onondaga County Sheriff's Department headquarters. The licenses belong to people who would be at least 75 years old if they are alive. Many of the gun owners would be in their mid-100s.
"I think it's safe to assume they're no longer with us," Sgt. Thomas Metz, head of the sheriff's department's records section, said of the oldest license holders. "The question is, where are the handguns?"
Since pistol license holders own an average of three guns each, about 12,000 handguns are likely out there, either held illegally by relatives or unaccounted for, Metz said. The sheriff's department calls those 4,000 files "suspect licenses."
A detective has so far found one case in which a pistol license holder died and one of his guns wound up on the streets, traded for drugs by a criminal.
Metz and Deputy Gary Rudiger stumbled onto the glut of unaccounted-for handguns five years ago, when they started looking for a way to reduce the load of paper records in the pistol license unit. When they discovered the vast number of licenses that apparently belonged to dead people, Metz and Rudiger looked at each other and said, "What about all those guns?"
The record-keeping problem had become a public safety problem.
"We have people who, according to our records and the records that the state has, were in their 70s and 80s in 1937, and we still show them as alive and well and having their handguns," Metz said. "The good news is, we're not ignoring it."
It is now Detective Ray Herrick's job to track down the suspect licenses and either retrieve the guns or report them missing to a national crime information database. He'll reach into files that go back to 1931 to do it, and it will take at least five years, probably much longer, Metz said.
A federal grant of $30,000 allowed the sheriff's department to hire two retired deputies to do the normal work of the pistol unit supervisor so Herrick can start his mission.
That means tracking down the gun owners' survivors and asking for weapons that they're illegally holding - often unwittingly.
State law requires relatives of a pistol license holder to turn in that person's handguns within 15 days of his or her death. If the guns remain in the home, it's a misdemeanor. Most people don't know about the law, Herrick said. But they don't have to fear his knock on their door.
"We're not out to arrest anyone," Herrick said. "Our responsibility is to investigate the whereabouts of these guns."
Sheriff's officials met with the Onondaga-Oswego Funeral Directors Association a month ago to tell them about their project. The funeral directors, who had been unaware of the state law, have started passing on the information to grieving families. It has become part of their routine checklist to ask a dead person's survivor if he or she had any licensed handguns at home, said Patricia A. Knight, treasurer of the association.
The county's project is getting started as a national debate rages over handgun control and how to reduce the number of weapons available to criminals. The project should serve notice that thousands of unaccounted-for guns would have been off the streets if people had known the law and followed it, Metz said.
"We've got a 50-year problem here," he said. "We're going to be at this for a while."
After discovering the problem in 1995, sheriff's department clerks spent the next 15 months typing the name of every one of the county's 41,000 pistol license holders into the department's Criminal History Arrest Information Reporting System, or CHAIRS.
Now every week or two, the county's Bureau of Vital Statistics sends over a list of people who have died in the county to the sheriff's department. The list is sometimes 100 names long. The sheriff's department tries to match every name with one of the pistol license holders in CHAIRS. They've matched 736 people.
Herrick's next task is to find the families of those people. Of the 736, Herrick estimates that relatives turned in the guns in about 20 cases.
Herrick plans to mail a letter to each license holder's family, detailing state law requirements for turning in handguns. Relatives would need to apply for a license for themselves to keep a handgun. He said he knows better than to come barging through the door.
"We have to tread lightly," Herrick said. "I can't just call up and say, 'I'm a cop and I want your guns.' "
If the handguns can't be located, they'll be listed in a national crime database.
The problem is not unique to Onondaga County. Officials at the state police's pistol license division know of no other county that has started tracking down the pistol licenses of people who are probably dead. But it's likely that a good number of the 1,163,040 pistol licenses in the state belong to people who are long gone, said Sgt. James Sherman, head of the state police pistol license unit.
In Oswego County, the clerk's office sent out letters to the 12,000 pistol license holders in that county about 18 months ago, after a judge saw what was happening in Onondaga County, Oswego County Clerk George Williams said. About 9,000 of the pistol license holders notified the clerk's office that they still had the guns. The remaining 3,000 are unaccounted for, Williams said. But Oswego County is not actively tracking down the handguns in those cases, he said.
Metz said he hopes Onondaga County's project will become a pilot for the state. He also hopes the shock of discovering how many guns might be unaccounted for will prompt a change in state law to make gun owners in Onondaga County renew their licenses every five years. That has already happened in Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk counties.
At the very least, Metz said, he hopes that by computerizing pistol licenses, his unit will be able to send out notices every five years to every gun owner to determine which license holders might be dead or have moved away.
Herrick reads the obituaries in the newspaper every day, looking for the names of any of the older pistol license holders. The goal is to get as many of the handguns out of homes as he can, to prevent them from being stolen in burglaries and used on the street.
Herrick cited one case in which a licensed pistol holder died in September. After the man's widow died about a month ago, her sister-in-law went through the house and collected the two guns that remained there, Herrick said. That woman's 37-year-old son broke into her home last month, stole one of the handguns and traded it on the street for crack cocaine, Herrick said.
The weapon, a 22-caliber revolver, was loaded with five rounds. It's still missing.
If the man's widow had turned in that gun last year, it would have been in police custody, Herrick said.
Herrick had to track down six other handguns that were listed on that man's license. He determined that over the years, starting in 1948, the man had sold or given them to other licensed gun owners without notifying the pistol license unit as the law required.
In addition to the 41,000 pistol licenses stored at sheriff's department headquarters, at least 20,000 more fill 27 storage boxes at the sheriff's annex in DeWitt. For unknown reasons, those files were shipped to the annex, though their dates overlap with the files at headquarters. The annex files await Herrick once he's finished tracking down the 4,000 suspect licenses at headquarters.
The job will undoubtedly be tedious. But it's more than cleaning up old records, Metz said.
"We know that at the end of the line in each of these cases," he said, "there's a gun."
Sunday, April 9, 2000"
"Where Are All The Guns?
By John O'Brien
The crinkly document, filled out in 1942, says a 64-year-old man got a license to carry a .38-caliber revolver to protect himself and his home on Fitch Street in Syracuse.
The man's stern, mustachioed face stares out from a thumbprint-size black-and-white photograph attached to the license. It is still valid. As far as Onondaga County and New York state are concerned, the man is alive and well and packing heat.
He would be 122 years old.
And he's not the only one. As many as 4,000 other cases like his are under scrutiny at Onondaga County Sheriff's Department headquarters. The licenses belong to people who would be at least 75 years old if they are alive. Many of the gun owners would be in their mid-100s.
"I think it's safe to assume they're no longer with us," Sgt. Thomas Metz, head of the sheriff's department's records section, said of the oldest license holders. "The question is, where are the handguns?"
Since pistol license holders own an average of three guns each, about 12,000 handguns are likely out there, either held illegally by relatives or unaccounted for, Metz said. The sheriff's department calls those 4,000 files "suspect licenses."
A detective has so far found one case in which a pistol license holder died and one of his guns wound up on the streets, traded for drugs by a criminal.
Metz and Deputy Gary Rudiger stumbled onto the glut of unaccounted-for handguns five years ago, when they started looking for a way to reduce the load of paper records in the pistol license unit. When they discovered the vast number of licenses that apparently belonged to dead people, Metz and Rudiger looked at each other and said, "What about all those guns?"
The record-keeping problem had become a public safety problem.
"We have people who, according to our records and the records that the state has, were in their 70s and 80s in 1937, and we still show them as alive and well and having their handguns," Metz said. "The good news is, we're not ignoring it."
It is now Detective Ray Herrick's job to track down the suspect licenses and either retrieve the guns or report them missing to a national crime information database. He'll reach into files that go back to 1931 to do it, and it will take at least five years, probably much longer, Metz said.
A federal grant of $30,000 allowed the sheriff's department to hire two retired deputies to do the normal work of the pistol unit supervisor so Herrick can start his mission.
That means tracking down the gun owners' survivors and asking for weapons that they're illegally holding - often unwittingly.
State law requires relatives of a pistol license holder to turn in that person's handguns within 15 days of his or her death. If the guns remain in the home, it's a misdemeanor. Most people don't know about the law, Herrick said. But they don't have to fear his knock on their door.
"We're not out to arrest anyone," Herrick said. "Our responsibility is to investigate the whereabouts of these guns."
Sheriff's officials met with the Onondaga-Oswego Funeral Directors Association a month ago to tell them about their project. The funeral directors, who had been unaware of the state law, have started passing on the information to grieving families. It has become part of their routine checklist to ask a dead person's survivor if he or she had any licensed handguns at home, said Patricia A. Knight, treasurer of the association.
The county's project is getting started as a national debate rages over handgun control and how to reduce the number of weapons available to criminals. The project should serve notice that thousands of unaccounted-for guns would have been off the streets if people had known the law and followed it, Metz said.
"We've got a 50-year problem here," he said. "We're going to be at this for a while."
After discovering the problem in 1995, sheriff's department clerks spent the next 15 months typing the name of every one of the county's 41,000 pistol license holders into the department's Criminal History Arrest Information Reporting System, or CHAIRS.
Now every week or two, the county's Bureau of Vital Statistics sends over a list of people who have died in the county to the sheriff's department. The list is sometimes 100 names long. The sheriff's department tries to match every name with one of the pistol license holders in CHAIRS. They've matched 736 people.
Herrick's next task is to find the families of those people. Of the 736, Herrick estimates that relatives turned in the guns in about 20 cases.
Herrick plans to mail a letter to each license holder's family, detailing state law requirements for turning in handguns. Relatives would need to apply for a license for themselves to keep a handgun. He said he knows better than to come barging through the door.
"We have to tread lightly," Herrick said. "I can't just call up and say, 'I'm a cop and I want your guns.' "
If the handguns can't be located, they'll be listed in a national crime database.
The problem is not unique to Onondaga County. Officials at the state police's pistol license division know of no other county that has started tracking down the pistol licenses of people who are probably dead. But it's likely that a good number of the 1,163,040 pistol licenses in the state belong to people who are long gone, said Sgt. James Sherman, head of the state police pistol license unit.
In Oswego County, the clerk's office sent out letters to the 12,000 pistol license holders in that county about 18 months ago, after a judge saw what was happening in Onondaga County, Oswego County Clerk George Williams said. About 9,000 of the pistol license holders notified the clerk's office that they still had the guns. The remaining 3,000 are unaccounted for, Williams said. But Oswego County is not actively tracking down the handguns in those cases, he said.
Metz said he hopes Onondaga County's project will become a pilot for the state. He also hopes the shock of discovering how many guns might be unaccounted for will prompt a change in state law to make gun owners in Onondaga County renew their licenses every five years. That has already happened in Westchester, Nassau and Suffolk counties.
At the very least, Metz said, he hopes that by computerizing pistol licenses, his unit will be able to send out notices every five years to every gun owner to determine which license holders might be dead or have moved away.
Herrick reads the obituaries in the newspaper every day, looking for the names of any of the older pistol license holders. The goal is to get as many of the handguns out of homes as he can, to prevent them from being stolen in burglaries and used on the street.
Herrick cited one case in which a licensed pistol holder died in September. After the man's widow died about a month ago, her sister-in-law went through the house and collected the two guns that remained there, Herrick said. That woman's 37-year-old son broke into her home last month, stole one of the handguns and traded it on the street for crack cocaine, Herrick said.
The weapon, a 22-caliber revolver, was loaded with five rounds. It's still missing.
If the man's widow had turned in that gun last year, it would have been in police custody, Herrick said.
Herrick had to track down six other handguns that were listed on that man's license. He determined that over the years, starting in 1948, the man had sold or given them to other licensed gun owners without notifying the pistol license unit as the law required.
In addition to the 41,000 pistol licenses stored at sheriff's department headquarters, at least 20,000 more fill 27 storage boxes at the sheriff's annex in DeWitt. For unknown reasons, those files were shipped to the annex, though their dates overlap with the files at headquarters. The annex files await Herrick once he's finished tracking down the 4,000 suspect licenses at headquarters.
The job will undoubtedly be tedious. But it's more than cleaning up old records, Metz said.
"We know that at the end of the line in each of these cases," he said, "there's a gun."
Sunday, April 9, 2000"
] that the vast majority of these guns are doing exactly what they were intended to do ... serve as self defense weapons in the hands of honest civilians.