From: [a--y--r] at [nmsu.edu] (Nosy)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Thugs Steal Guns From US Army
Date: 20 Nov 93 14:45:51


From Cox News Service:
Washington, DC 11/19/93 reprinted without permission.
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Military weapons -- everything from rocket lauchers to stolen rifle
parts -- are being stolen from U.S. bases and supplied to clandestine
customers ranging from street gangs to religious cults, witnesses
warned a Senate committee Thursday.

Indeed, a Michigan National Guardsman stole small-arms parts for five
years and sold them to an Illinois gun dealer whose customers included
David Koresh's Branch Davidian religious sect near Waco, Texas,
according to federal investigators.

The investigation by the General Accounting Office found lax security
over weapons at all six bases that agents visited -- including Fort
Benning, Ga. and Army National Guard units in Atlanta and Fort
Stewart, Ga. 

The thefts -- usually by military personnel or civilian base workers
-- are so easily accomplished that military small-arms parts "are
readily available" at gun shows, even though these parts cannot be
legally sold to the public, testified Donna Heivilin, who led the GAO
investigation. 

Another witness told the Senate Government Affairs Committee that this
stolen weaponry has enabled criminals to arm themselves almost like
soldiers.

Gang members have been found with virtual military arsenals -- "heavy
machine guns, rocket launchers, automatic rifles, semiautomatic
pistols, grenades, plastic explosives," said Michael Vaughn, detective
superintendent of the Gang Information Section of the Los Angeles
Police Department.

The GAO investigators found that theft of military weapons was not
hard to accomplish.

Mark S. Carter of Potterville, Michigan, a member of the Michigan
National Guard from August 1982 until April 1992, said it was easy for
him to steal gun parts, mostly on workdays "because I didn't want to
go in on weekends."

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