'Straw' gun buyers leave a bloody trail
Authorities are cracking down on those who buy guns for criminals who can't. Experts say "gray market" supplies 90 percent of guns used in crimes.
Give Mark Koscielski the slightest indication that the gun you want to buy from him may not be for you, and the sale's over.
"Say a couple comes in, and the male is looking at guns while the female doesn't do anything, and finally he says, 'I will take this gun,'" said the owner of Koscielski's Guns and Ammo in south Minneapolis. "We hand him the federal form, and he will hand it to his girlfriend or wife. Can't do that."
That's how federal authorities want gun sellers to respond to "straw buyers" -- people with no criminal record who buy a gun and then hand it over someone who can't legally buy one because they're a criminal, mentally ill or underage.
Experts estimate that 90 percent of guns used in crimes come through this "gray market," said Bernard Zapor, special agent in charge of the St. Paul field division of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
At some point, someone is taking those guns from the lawful market to the unlawful market, he said. Whether it's someone looking to make an extra buck or a girlfriend doing a favor for a boyfriend, it's illegal.
Chaska Police Chief Scott Knight, chairman of the firearms committee for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, said straw buyers are different than gun runners. He said straw buyers don't buy in volume. The vast majority are women, he said, and they do it out of allegiance, not for money.
"Quite frankly," Knight said, "straw purchasers may not be fully knowledgeable about exactly what they're doing and their own liability."
Crackdown underway
Zapor said that Minnesota's straw purchases represent a relatively small share of those made nationally and that most guns bought that way here stay within the state. Therefore, Minnesota is not considered a significant source nationally of straw-bought guns.
Still, authorities say such guns do significant damage within the state. In Minneapolis, which has seen 33 homicides so far this year, most from gunshots, authorities recently announced Project Exile, a push to prosecute more cases of illegal gun possession in federal court, where penalties unusually are tougher.
Zapor said the ownership of every gun from a shooting in Minneapolis is now traced through the straw-buyer chain to the point where the weapon was last purchased legally. The straw buyers they snag face being prosecuted federally, he said.
Lt. Andy Smith heads up the Minneapolis Police Department's Violent Offender Task Force. It has investigated and forwarded several straw-purchase cases to state and federal prosecutors. He said that straw buyers don't fit a pat profile; they're both men and women, younger and older, well-off and poor. What they have in common, he said, is that they're all potential agents of destruction.
"It's fair to say that a prohibited person who wants to acquire a handgun illegally isn't doing it for honorable purposes," Smith said. "Anybody engaged in straw purchasing should expect the end result of that is likely going to be death or great bodily harm to somebody."
Gun shows: a loophole?
Colin Goddard remembers the smell of the gun powder, the shock of the bullets and the wetness of his blood.
Goddard was shot three times in his French classroom at Virginia Tech in April 2007, in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. Three years later, there's a YouTube video of him at a gun show in Forest Lake. He buys a semi-automatic pistol for $225 cash.
He doesn't show so much as a driver's license, and he's out the door. But not before the unidentified private seller chuckles and says to Goddard: "There's no tax. There's no paperwork. That's worth something."
Goddard, 24, who is now assistant director of federal legislation for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said the Forest Lake seller violated no law. Minnesota's "gun show loophole" exempts private sellers at shows from having to perform background checks.
"Criminals cannot [legally] buy guns, or the mentally ill," Goddard said. "If you don't enforce that at the point of sale, what are you going to do to enforce the law?"
Dylan Klebold, one of the shooters in the 1997 Columbine school massacre, first asked a friend to buy guns for him, Knight said. When she refused, he bought the guns he wanted at a gun show.
A Minnesota bill to close the loophole on the state level never made it out of committee, while a bill by a U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., remains in Congress.
National Rifle Association spokeswoman Rachel Parsons said that most legislation to limit private sales also would prevent family transactions, such as a grandfather trying to give his grandson a gun for his birthday. She adds that less than 1 percent of guns used in crime are acquired at shows.
"Gun shows are not the problem," she said. "Criminals are getting guns from the black market. We need to make sure we're out there enforcing the laws we have, putting criminals in jail and leaving the law-abiding people alone."
Koscielski, the gun shop owner, said that as long as such criminals use straw buyers, shop owners will need to keep watching for telltale signs and reading faces, or face getting shut down.
"I always err on the side of caution," he said. "I have to."
Abby Simons • 612-673-4921