Richmond Gun Show Furor
ATF Says No More ‘Residency Checks’
by Dave Workman
Senior Editor
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) will no longer engage in “residency checks” of gun show patrons after an operation in Richmond, VA, ignited outrage among gunowners nationwide who branded it a “rogue operation” and suggested it was done to intimidate and harass show patrons.
A “joint operation” involving ATF agents, the Virginia State Police (VSP) and officers from the Henrico County Police Department targeted gun buyers at the Aug. 13-14 Richmond gun show. Gun Week has also confirmed that a Richmond Police Department lieutenant was present. The operation was conducted by a joint task force. During the event, held at the Richmond International Raceway and Fairground complex, police officers were dispatched to the homes of persons who bought a gun at the show. Apparently unbeknownst to dealers at the show, or the show promoters, they quizzed members of gun buyers’ families about the purchases. Gun Week learned of at least one “knock and talk” that occurred while the transaction was still in progress at the show.
A spokeswoman for ATF called it “an isolated incident” and said that the agency has “evaluated our position and decided not to participate in residency checks in Richmond at this time.”
Yet Sheree Mixell, chief of the ATF’s Office of Public Affairs in Washington, DC, insisted to Gun Week, “There is no Privacy Act violation, there are no Fourth Amendment issues. (This was) totally within the parameters of the law.”
That assertion is in dispute.
Names and addresses of gun buyers were apparently taken from federal Forms 4473 and passed along to the local police, who dispatched officers to conduct the residency checks. Mixell confirmed that the task force, “in order to verify legality of firearms purchases, did residence checks of every purchaser.” This raised concerns with the show operators and the firearms community that it was an illegal use of Form 4473 information.
“In terms of specifics,” Mixell said, “this is part of an on-going investigation. . . . The actions that occurred at the August gun show are an isolated incident.”
“This was not an on-going investigation,” countered Joe Waldron, executive director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, a national grassroots gun rights organization. “This was a fishing expedition.”
When Gun Week contacted Henrico County police and the Richmond ATF office, officials with both agencies refused to discuss the operation. An officer with the Richmond Police Department insisted officers from that agency were not involved, yet other sources contacted by Gun Week assert they were. He later confirmed the presence of a Richmond lieutenant.
Henrico County Police Lt. Doug Perry told Gun Week that officers from his agency were “assisting ATF with background checks through the Virginia State Police.” Beyond that, he referred all inquiries to ATF, as did a spokeswoman for the VSP.
“It’s an operational thing,” Perry stated. “We’re not going to comment (on) anything further.”
Gun Week was stunned by the reception at the Richmond ATF office. Our first call was greeted by a male who refused to identify himself, laughed and said “I know who you are,” and finally hung up the telephone. Gun Week had immediately identified itself when he answered. A second call was answered by a female, who also laughed after we identified ourselves. Only after Gun Week then demanded to speak to her supervisor were we connected with Scott Sammis, who identified himself as the special agent in charge.
Responding to Gun Week’s request for information about the weekend gun show operation, Sammis said, “I don’t think I can speak to it.” He said no information would be given without a Freedom of Information request, and then suggested Gun Week contact ATF in Washington, DC.
He added that the first “employee” who answered the telephone apparently believed he was speaking to someone else, and thought it was a joke. Sammis said the unidentified employee apologized for his telephone conduct.
Advised of the telephone exchange, Mixell also apologized to Gun Week.
From all indications, it appears ATF headquarters in Washington was not aware of the Richmond operation until after it happened, and the show operators complained.
Show Operators Angry
Gun show organizers Steve Elliott and Annette Gelles are outraged, and have, along with their attorney in Washington, DC, met with ATF officials. Elliott, who owns C&E Gun Shows, asserted that the August incident was the latest in what he considers a string of abuses by ATF agents toward his gun shows.
The Richmond Raceway gun show is operated by Gelles, who owns Showmasters.us and is Elliott’s fiancé and partner in the Nations Gun Show held in Chantilly, VA. She concurred in the description of law enforcement activity surrounding her show as “harassment.”
Elliott alleged that ATF had, at an earlier show, used cameras without his permission to covertly photograph gun show patrons. He further asserted that ATF had wrongly told building managers at the facility where the gun show was held that they had gotten his permission to use the cameras.
“We got the cameras squished,” Elliott said. “We told them we knew about the cameras at Richmond and we didn’t want them back, but in spirit of cooperation, as long as they were targeting criminals, we didn’t have a problem with it. . . . We don’t want bad guys to have guns.”
But the August operation was described by Elliott as “the most overwhelming, intimidating thing I’ve seen.”
Gelles told Gun Week that “They’re going after gun shows and harassing people. It’s intimidation. They don’t need to send a cruiser to anybody’s home.”
She is convinced that sending police officers to home addresses taken from federal gun purchase forms is illegal.
Mixell said otherwise, adding that, “We find that resident checks are an effective means of preventing unlawful firearms purchases.”
Mixell insisted that ATF efforts, in cooperation with local law enforcement, have prevented criminals from getting guns through straw purchases. She said one of ATF’s duties is to prevent such sales and to assist state and local law enforcement agencies in their efforts.
But, following the furor generated by the Richmond operation—an enforcement approach that Mixell acknowledged has not been used anywhere else in the country to her knowledge—she reiterated to Gun Week, “We have taken this situation and evaluated this position and decided not to continue (participating in residency checks).”
Numbers Disputed
Elliott estimated that upwards of 45 law enforcement officers descended on the Richmond show on Saturday (Aug. 13) and Gelles put the estimate at closer to 70 officers. Photographs on the Showmasters.us website purportedly show dozens of police vehicles parked at the Raceway parking lot, though only a few appear to be actual patrol cars. Mixell could not guess how many officers from the VSP or Henrico County were involved, but she believes that only between six and 10 ATF agents participated.
Elliott said that there were “several confrontations” between ATF agents and show patrons.
Virginia is a “point of contact” state for background checks, so when handguns are purchased, those checks are performed by the state police. Elliott asserted that when a patron filled out paperwork at the gun show, including a state handgun purchase form and a federal Form 4473, ATF agents took the buyer’s address information while state police conducted the background checks. An officer was dispatched to the buyer’s home to confirm whether the individual actually lived at the address listed on the purchase form.
“As far as we’re concerned,” Elliott said, “it was illegal.”
Also, instead of using cameras, Elliott alleged that officers involved in the August operation spied on gun show patrons with binoculars.
“We just can’t have our rights trampled on like this,” Elliott said. “I’m thinking of taking my list of names (of gun show patrons) from the Richmond area and sending them a postcard asking whether they have been harassed by law enforcement officers.”
Elliott, Gelles and their attorney have already met with ATF officials. Both Elliott and Gelles told Gun Week that they have received assurances from ATF that the agency’s participation in residency checks will be halted, affirming what ATF spokeswoman Mixell said.
However, Mixell said that “what state and local law enforcement does is anybody’s guess.” If state and local agencies continue the practice, ATF will not be part of it, she insisted.
Patrons Upset
One patron, Chris Bailey, told Gun Week that while he was waiting for his background check paperwork to be processed—which he said involved an “abnormal wait”—he got a telephone call from his wife, Donna, advising him that she had been contacted by a Henrico County officer.
“He basically told her that (I) had inquired about purchasing a gun, and he was doing a check on the information (I) had submitted to the gun dealer,” Bailey said.
His wife confirmed the conversation in a separate interview. The questions pertained to Bailey’s residency at the home, how long he had lived there and other information.
“This has never happened before,” Bailey said. “It surprised me. I have purchased guns in the past.”
While he was “not particularly offended” about the incident, he said that “nobody tried to explain it to me afterward” and added that “the dealer didn’t know anything about it.”
“I think it was held up specifically because they were doing a physical investigation, which I’m not opposed to,” Bailey said. “I want them to have the appropriate investigation means to stop crime, but not to breach my rights.”
Donna Bailey told Gun Week that, “It caught me by surprise when a policeman came to the door. I don’t know how the (background check) information got back to the (officer).”
She said the officer, whose name she did not get, told her that these residence checks are “something they are doing . . . just to keep track of who’s buying a gun.” She said the officer did not ask how many guns her husband owns, and that he was “very polite (and) non-confrontational.”
Abrasive Encounter
Another patron, James Lalime, had a far more abrasive encounter with an ATF agent. Lalime, who works weekend gun shows occasionally for a firearms dealer, was attending the Richmond event as a private citizen, and he had at least one firearm for sale, which he identified as an Uzi.
“I was approached by an ATF agent,” Lalime recalled. “He pulled me off to the side and basically gave me a hard time. He said ‘You need to get a business license if you’re going to sell firearms.’ ”
The agent, whom Lalime identified to Gun Week by name, was allegedly working “undercover.” This confrontation occurred in front of witnesses, one of whom apparently was show operator Gelles. Lalime also said the agent told him, “We see you at a lot of gun shows.”
The confrontation ended abruptly when the agent was taken aside by a supervisor.
While the conversation bothered Lalime, he was equally offended by a T-shirt the agent was wearing, which had a message on the back that said, “If you can read this, the bitch fell off,” apparently referring to riding a motorcycle. Lalime was concerned about that because several children accompany their parents to the gun show. This is not the kind of representation, he observed, that a law enforcement agency needs in public. The agent was subsequently asked to turn his T-shirt inside out by gun show management.
Alarmed by the events at the gun show, Philip Van Cleave with the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) sent out a nationwide e-mail alert, resulting in a firestorm on several Internet chat forums. In a follow-up alert, Van Cleave said, “Serious questions are raised about various laws that might have been broken.”
Gun activists were outraged, and the Internet rhetoric occasionally went over the top.
Van Cleave told Gun Week that he actually attended the gun show briefly, and upon his arrival, was stunned by the number of police vehicles and personnel on the site.
“I thought they were having some kind of big seminar,” he said.
Van Cleave said it seemed to him to be a misallocation of law enforcement resources. He blamed anti-gun Richmond Mayor Doug Wilder’s administration.
“Richmond has a real crime problem and he’s got officers chasing down decent people,” Van Cleave said.
Gun Week learned that the National Rifle Association is looking into the incident. Charles Cunningham, director of federal affairs for the NRA’s Institute of Legislative Action, said the operation was, in his opinion, “way across the line.” He noted that background check information for the National Instant Check System “is not supposed to be shared unless it is for a bonafide criminal investigation. They can’t just use it for a fishing expedition.”
While the VSP does background checks on handgun purchases, the form they require from gun buyers does not contain street address information, according to VSP public information manager Corinne Geller. The only form from which law enforcement could have gotten residential information on gun buyers like Chris Bailey during the Richmond show would have been off the Form 4473, she confirmed.
Cunningham called the Richmond operation “a huge diversion of resources into something that statistically is not a major source of crime guns.”
According to a survey of convicts funded by the Department of Justice a few years ago, only 1% of criminals incarcerated for violent crimes got their firearms at gun shows.
“This was such a huge waste,” said NRA-ILA counsel Christopher Conte. “We don’t have a report of them interdicting any private sales. . . . They could not have possibly expected to accomplish anything.”
Nobody could explain how the Aug. 13-14 operation was funded. Some critics speculated that it was paid for from federal funds channeled into the city’s “Project Safe Neighborhoods” program. One source told Gun Week that this is a problem with federal law enforcement grants given to local agencies for such programs, contending that such funds “are generally unrestricted and (there is) little or no guidance on how they are awarded and they have no oversight.”
However, Mixell at ATF and Geller with the VSP speculated that there probably was not any special funding involved. Both suggested that officers were assigned to this effort as part of their normal work day, and that would have included officers assigned to the joint task force.
Of greater concern to other gun show operators is an allegation that appeared in the VCDL alert that the ATF was planning to use the Richmond strategy as a “model” for how they cover gun shows across the country.
The president of the Washington Arms Collectors (WAC), which operates monthly gun shows in Puyallup and Monroe, WA, told Gun Week that he has already asked ATF in Seattle if it truly does plan to use the Richmond operation as a “model.” He said an ATF spokeswoman claimed no knowledge about the Richmond event.
He also said that if he were to learn that ATF and local police agencies had been involved in the kind of operation reported in Richmond, that he would have no recourse but to meet with WAC legal counsel and seek an injunction in federal or state court.
One source close to the controversy, a Washington, DC, legal expert who requested anonymity, told Gun Week that there are “all sorts of genuine legal issues” involved, including invasion of privacy and what he called “some federal statutory issues.” He did not elaborate.
“I think,” said the source, “the agency is waking up to the fact that what happened down there was an absolute debacle.”
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