State Law Often Ignored : Gun Shows Are Easy Mark for Illegal Weapon Sales

When the young man peddling assault weapons walked into the gun show at the California State Fairgrounds at Del Mar, there were so many vendors already doing business that tables laden with firearms and other merchandise filled two huge showrooms and overflowed into an open airspace between the buildings.

Undaunted, the young man, wearing a leather hat over his long shaggy hair, simply sat down on a patch of grass next to the entrance of a showroom and spread his weapons on the ground before him like a vegetable merchant.

His wares included an AR-15 assault rifle, an Uzi carbine and a Tec-9 assault pistol with four 32-bullet magazines.

Asked by a Times reporter if a waiting period was required for the purchase of the assault pistol, which was priced at $300, the gun peddler snickered:

“How long do you want to wait? Five minutes?”

It is against the law in California to sell a handgun to a stranger without completing the transaction through a licensed gun dealer. The law says the dealer must send for a state Justice Department criminal record check of the purchaser and observe a 15-day “cooling off” period between the request for purchase and the delivery of the weapon.

Most firearms vendors at gun shows in California do not flout the law as flagrantly as did the young peddler in Del Mar last month. Since news reports several years ago of wide-open handgun sales in violation of the law at gun shows, police in some jurisdictions have cracked down and show promoters now routinely post warnings to vendors to obey the law.

But it is still easy to buy handguns--cash and carry, no waiting, no identification--at weekend gun shows up and down the state.

This spring, firearms vendors made illegal, on-the-spot handgun sales to a Times reporter at gun shows from San Diego to the San Francisco Bay Area. The eight handguns, purchased without identification or waiting, ranged in price from $50 for a .22-caliber revolver at a gun show in Lancaster to $250 for a 9-millimeter semiautomatic assault pistol at a show in Riverside. One vendor even offered a discount for quantity purchases.

Moreover, at a show at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona in March, a 16-year-old girl working with The Times was approached by a peddler who sold her a .25-caliber pistol for $60, with no identification and no waiting period. It is against state law to sell firearms to minors.

These gun shows, set up by professional promoters, are a multimillion-dollar industry in California that provide settings in which countless numbers of handguns are sold in violation of California law.

News stories about the easy availability of firearms have actually helped gun shows, according to a major promoter.

“The more adverse publicity the media gives guns, the more popular guns become (and) the more popular gun shows become,” said Steve Breitel, who stages about 40 such shows a year in California. “We don’t even have to manipulate the media--they do a better job of it than we could.”

Used in Homicides

Proponents of tighter gun control are critical of the routine violation of handgun sale laws at these shows, pointing to federal statistics indicating that 44% of homicides in the United States are committed with handguns.

Law enforcement authorities express concern that the largely unregulated gun shows provide a marketplace for stolen guns and a source of weapons for criminals.

A federal criminal case is pending against one gun show peddler who allegedly is linked to the illegal sale of firearms to violent Los Angeles street gangs and narcotics dealers.

Breitel maintains that such activity is the exception and that the great majority of gun show vendors are law-abiding.

Breitel is only one of several promoters who regularly stage gun shows up and down the state.

On any given weekend in California there are dozens--even hundreds--of tables laden with weapons set up in showrooms at county or state fairgrounds or in municipal convention centers. There are handguns of every type, from innocent-looking .22-caliber palm guns to mean-looking snub-nosed .38s to big Army-style .45s.

There are long, graceful shotguns and rifles designed for target shooting and hunting. And there are short, compact riot shotguns and assault rifles designed specifically for killing people at close range. There are also antique rifles and rare handguns on display, but most of the weaponry is not there just to be admired or marveled over. Much of it is brand new and nearly everything is for sale.

Ammunition, Knives

Guns are the anchor of the shows, of course, but they are far from the only things on the vending tables. There is ammunition to go with the guns. There are knives, surgical instruments, electric stun devices, turquoise and silver jewelry, black T-shirts with snakes and skulls, decals that say “Kill ‘Em All and Let God Sort ‘Em Out.”

There are beer mugs bearing pictures of Elvis Presley and plates with the faces of John Wayne, James Dean or Tom Selleck--your choice. And there are instruction books on how to build booby traps or spy on people or convert semiautomatic Uzis into fully automatic machine guns. There is also beef jerky and beer and candy and nuts.

The size of these events varies. Promoter Breitel put on the giant 2,500-table Western Americana Show & Sale at the state fairgrounds at Del Mar in April. He says it is the second-largest such event on the West Coast.

Patrons lined up at two ticket counters to pay $6 each to get into the event while vendors paid Breitel anywhere from $32 to $255 for tables and booths.

Although Breitel and other promoters warn vendors not to violate the state law against cash-and-carry handgun sales at these gun shows, another California gun control law is apparently being violated with regularity at the events:

State law forbids licensed handgun dealers to conduct business anywhere but at the locations listed on their licenses.

State Law

A clause in state Penal Code Section 12071, relating to licenses to sell handguns, says: “The business shall be carried on only in the building designated in the license.” The apparent purpose of the law is to strictly control the locations in which handguns are sold. Dealers who violate the provision are subject to forfeiture of their licenses.

“If you’re going to sell guns as a business, you’re going to sell them out of the licensed location--and that’s it,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. Robert C. Schneider, a gun law expert for the state Department of Justice.

Nevertheless, many state-licensed firearms dealers regularly set up tables at gun shows held at various locations throughout the state and--in apparent violation of the law--openly negotiate handgun sales, fill out purchase forms and take deposits for the weapons that are delivered after the required record check and 15-day wait.

“I would say that’s illegal,” Schneider said. “I think that would be doing business in a pretty basic sense.”

There is apparent confusion over the law among local law enforcement authorities, managers of county and state fairgrounds, gun show promoters and firearms dealers themselves. The dealers must possess federal gun dealer licenses as well as locally issued licenses to legally sell handguns in California. In the mid-1980s, federal regulations were changed to allow federally licensed gun dealers to sell firearms at gun shows as well as at their places of business. But that provision is negated in California by the state law prohibiting such sales, according to the state attorney general’s office.

Pomona police officers who do undercover work at gun shows at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds frequently arrest vendors who make illegal handgun sales but apparently are unaware of the law prohibiting dealers licensed under state law from conducting business at gun shows.

“We would look to the district attorney’s office for some guidance in that area,” said Pomona Police Chief Richard Tefank, when asked about the law.

Gene Welch, owner of the Gun Nutt store in El Cajon, says he and his clerks attend two or three gun shows a month at which they regularly take deposits on handguns, fill out state forms and deliver the weapons after the required record checks and 15-day waiting periods.

“The problem we have is that every time we talk to an official, we get a different answer,” said Welch, when asked about the legality of such transactions. “The federal license we work under says that our license is good at our shops and at gun shows.”

After The Times inquired into the laws governing gun shows, Nelson Kempsky, chief deputy state attorney general, ordered Justice Department bulletins prepared for local law enforcement agencies advising them of the relevant statutes and warning them to check out firearm sales at gun shows within their jurisdictions. Kempsky said the bulletins will be sent out within a few weeks.

Loss of Allure

If such laws governing how and where handguns can be legally sold were uniformly enforced, gun show vendors could be virtually limited to selling rifles and shotguns, and the weekend events would almost certainly lose some of the allure for the public and be much less profitable for vendors and promoters.

Violation of state laws regulating handgun sales are misdemeanors carrying fines of up to $1,000 and up to six months in jail.

An unlicensed dealer who regularly sells firearms at gun shows can also be prosecuted under federal law that provides stiffer penalties--fines up to $5,000 and up to five years in prison.

But federal law exempts “occasional” sales and requires prosecutors to prove that a gun show vendor is in the “business” of regularly selling firearms.

The Pomona Police Department is considered by some firearms peddlers to be the toughest law enforcement agency in the state when it comes to illegal cash-and-carry handgun sales at gun shows.

At a gun show in May, 1986, Pomona police officers arrested 18 vendors despite warnings on the public address system that undercover officers would be making arrests for violations of the 15-day waiting period.

The previous May, with more officers on duty, police arrested 32 vendors at the event--one of whom was released and returned to be arrested again for a second violation.

Pomona Municipal Judge Thomas A. Peterson says he normally fines violators of handgun sale laws $300 to $500 and confiscates the firearm sold.

“If I knew that the guy went on the (gun show) circuit and sold guns all the time,” said Peterson, “then we’d have a little bit more than a fine because we’ve got to stop them from doing this.”

But some vendors do make the circuit of gun shows and some are willing to gamble that they won’t be the ones caught making illegal sales in Pomona. In March they were betting on a virtual sure thing when Pomona officers who might have policed the event were given another assignment.

In addition to the gun sold to the 16-year-old girl at that event, a Times reporter bought two handguns cash and carry.

One vendor, David Richmond of Yucca Valley, sold a 9-millimeter pistol to a reporter for $190 and, when asked, gave his name and phone number.

Enjoys Being Vendor

Richmond, 52, is retired from management work in electronics manufacturing and is active in Yucca Valley civic affairs such as water resource committees.

“I enjoy buying and selling guns,” said Richmond in a phone interview. “I buy them . . . play with them for a bit and if they’re not what I want to keep, then I will occasionally go to a gun show.”

Richmond says he attends about half a dozen shows a year.

“I rarely make any money,” he said. “I’m lucky to break even.”

Richmond says he sizes up potential handgun customers by their appearance and never sells to anyone who makes him uneasy.

Asked how he would feel if he inadvertently sold a handgun to a person who turned out to be a murderer, Richmond said, “I would not feel good about it at all.”

But he maintained that the 15-day wait is no protection.

“I can tell you a lot of people who did the 15-day waiting period and went out and shot someone,” he said.

At the same show in Pomona, Jacob Hahn--who was sitting at a vending table--sold a Times reporter a new .25-caliber handgun for $70. Subsequently, Hahn approached the reporter at the show, tried to sell another handgun and, when asked, gave the reporter his name and phone number for a possible future gun sale.

15-Day Wait

Shortly afterward, Hahn approached the 16-year-old girl who was working with The Times and sold her a pistol after a nearby vendor had refused to sell her a gun.

Hahn subsequently told The Times in an interview that he thought the teen-ager was 25 or 30 years old when he sold her the gun.

He said at first that he had bought the weapons, both of which appear brand new, from his son, Adam Hahn, operator of the Guns-N-Stuff firearms shop in Montebello, but later in the interview insisted that he bought them at a gun show from a stranger.

Hahn is a 55-year-old tool and die maker who says he is disabled from a stroke and was trying to pick up some extra money selling firearms at the gun show. He maintains that he did not know it was against the law to sell handguns cash and carry.

Most vendors at gun shows do not appear to be as incautious as Hahn.

For example, at the gun show last month at Del Mar, a reporter offered to buy a used .22-caliber revolver priced at $99 from a tall elderly man in a white cap and coveralls who was standing behind a table covered with handguns.

“Put the money in your pocket,” warned the vendor when the reporter attempted to hand him the cash. He then began to singsong “cloak and dagger, cloak and dagger” as he led the reporter outside the showroom to surreptitiously exchange the gun for the money.

“Some of these dealers,” he explained, “will turn you in.”

Restaurant Rendezvous

A vendor at a show in San Bernardino offered to sell a Times reporter a Tec-9 assault pistol for $250 but insisted that they meet in a restaurant after the show to make the sale over coffee.

The next week at a show in Riverside, the same vendor sold the assault pistol to the reporter across the table and furnished his name and number on a printed card. Riverside police do not send undercover officers to the shows held in that city’s Civic Auditorium.

The vendor, who subsequently talked to The Times on condition that his name not be used, said he has attended gun shows regularly for the last six years.

He estimated that about half of the vendors at the shows are serious collectors--as he described himself--and the other half are in it just for the money.

“I’m not negative about that,” he stressed. “You can’t say you’re negative about somebody trying to make a dollar.”