From: [m 0102] at [tnc.UUCP] (FRANK NEY) Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns,dc.talk.guns Subject: Does BATF *want* to stop Strawman purchases??? Date: 2 Feb 93 20:10:04 GMT Neal Knox Report An Outrage In Virginia By NEAL KNOX WASHINGTON, D.C. (Jan. 10) -- As a fight gears up in Congress over increasing the powers of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and on the eve of an all-out state legislative fight to limit Virginians to one handgun purchase per month, a politically ambitious U.S. Attorney has "made an example" of a family-run gun store in Richmond. Those three events are closely connected. BATF has released a three-page "study" that says Virginia dealers are the source of 40 percent of seized New York City handguns which "could be traced." The U.S. Attorney in Richmond, Richard Cullen, says an "astonishing" 27 percent of the guns traced to New York came from that one Richmond gun store. During her sentencing three days before Christmas, Hilda Weiss, the co-owner of that Richmond store, told the Federal judge that she and her late husband had sold large quantities of guns to people who BATF says were straw purchasers for a gun smuggling ring. Mrs. Weiss also told the court that she had never done anything wrong except for pleading guilty to BATF and Cullen's charges of gun control act violations -- a statement which the Richmond Times-Dispatch said had "shaken" the Federal judge. She also told the court that she had actively been cooperating with BATF for four years. Not only had she complied with the long-standing requirement that all multiple handguns sales be reported to BATF within 24 hours, she had immediately reported to BATF agents by coded telephone beeper calls whenever anyone purchased three or more handguns. Not only was such service to BATF not required by law, but it was done at considerable personal risk. Many of those volume buyers came back to her store to complain they had been stopped by BATF, and one who had been imprisoned was reportedly making threats against Mrs. Weiss. Mrs. Weiss also told me that she had testified against illegal buyers in a half-dozen trials, and that many more entered guilty pleas as a result of information she had passed on to BATF. When she asked her main BATF contact, Irvin Moran, whether she should stop making multiple sales, particularly to people he and other agents asked her to watch for, she told me he said, "No, no. Just be sure they tell you they're buying the guns for themselves." If she had quit making the sales, Moran and the BATF wouldn't have been able to make so many smuggling cases -- which is the way agents get promoted and prosecutors build a political reputation. About three months after Virginia Police Supply quit selling more than two guns per customer, she and her husband were charged with making strawman sales. Somebody didn't want them to quit. The best evidence that Mrs. Weiss is telling the truth is U.S. prosecutor Cullen's own statement that a fourth of the traceable guns seized in New York came from Virginia Police Equipment. Obviously, if due to Mrs. Weiss' efforts the BATF and law enforcement agencies were able to keep the guns under surveillance from her parking lot all the way to New York, those guns would show up among the 453 Virginia guns reported traced to New York by BATF in 1990. Though that was 40 percent of the 1,126 guns traced, the known Virginia guns were only 3.3 percent of the 13,759 handguns seized by New York City police. If 27 percent of those 453 guns --about 122 guns -- came from the Weiss shop, what happened to the several hundred other mass purchase guns that Mrs. Weiss sold with the encouragement of BATF agent Irvin Moran? Apparently they slipped through the BATF surveillance and are on the streets of New York City -- thanks to BATF. Mrs. Weiss told the Court that by her active assistance to BATF she thought that she, a German immigrant, was doing something for the good of the nation. Mrs. Weiss received a sentence of five months incarceration, plus five months' house arrest, plus $30,000 fine. She also received a life sentence of guilt for the death of her husband, a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel, who killed himself when he was not allowed to withdraw his own guilty plea. "If I hadn't cooperated with them, he would still be alive," she tearfully told me yesterday. "We pleaded guilty only because they threatened to charge our son, who has his whole life ahead of him." "My husband killed himself because he wanted to end the nightmare for me. But the nightmare keeps going." The BATF has released a transcript which appears to involve Don Weiss in a knowing strawman sale. As the court found in another mom and pop gunshop straw man case, the Paul and Billie Hayes prosecution in New Mexico a dozen years ago, the widely publicized Hayes transcript was phony. BATF's transcript was marked "unintelligible" for sections of the audio tape where the court reporter could clearly hear Paul Hayes refusing to take illegal actions, but appeared extremely incriminating in sections which the judge and court reporter found unintelligible on the audio tape. (The jury found the Hayes' not guilty in seven minutes.) I don't know whether the Don Weiss transcript was phony, and won't until it can be compared to the audio tape. But that case is moot, for Don Weiss is dead. I do know that there are some major questions about BATF's conduct in this case, and whether they and/or the U.S. Attorney were trying to further their own careers by sacrificing the lives of law-abiding citizens. I have seen it happen before. This case smells. It demands a thorough investigation. Frank Ney N4ZHG EMT-A LPVa NRA ILA GOA CCRTKBA "M-O-U-S-E" Commandant and Acting President, Northern Virginia Free Militia Send e-mail for an application and more information ---------------------------------------------------------------- "...I am opposed to all attempts to license or restrict the arming of individuals...I consider such laws a violation of civil liberty, subversive of democratic political institutions, and self-defeating in their purpose." - Robert Heinlein, in a 1949 letter concerning "Red Planet" -- The Next Challenge - Public Access Unix in Northern Va. - Washington D.C. 703-803-0391 To log in for trial and account info. ------------------------------------------------------------------------