COLUMN ONE : Arms Sales Put Southland Under the Gun : Federally licensed firearms dealers face little control. Under lax oversight, the government has even registered felons to peddle lethal weapons.

To the crack dealers and other criminals who regularly visited the Frontier Hotel on the fringes of Los Angeles’ Skid Row, Charles P. MacDonald was a comrade in arms.

Himself a convicted felon, the 60-year-old MacDonald sold guns to virtually anyone so long as they “didn’t look like a cop.” No questions asked. No paperwork. Cash and carry.

Of the 122 guns he sold over the last two years, authorities say, more than a dozen were used in burglaries, robberies and at least one attempted murder in which a man nearly died.

For MacDonald, whose hotel room was a federally licensed firearms dealership known as Chuck’s Guns, peddling lethal weapons was easy money.

For the people of Los Angeles, his activities represented not only a graphic threat to public safety, but a striking example of a system out of control.

There are 270,000 gun dealers licensed by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. More than 3,000 are in Los Angeles County--more than in any other county in the United States.

Oversight of these dealers is so loose that for $30 almost anyone can get a federal license to buy guns at wholesale prices and sell them with little fear of scrutiny. Their activities in Los Angeles and elsewhere, The Times found, have contributed to the general proliferation of firearms while making it easier for criminals to arm themselves.

Loopholes in federal law have permitted hundreds of people in Los Angeles County to obtain federal licenses even though few operate gun stores, pawnshops or other legitimate outlets that are routinely monitored by local law enforcement agencies.

Federally licensed gun dealers in Los Angeles include an Eagle Rock man who says he has a history of mental illness, a Highland Park survivalist, a Chinatown baker, a renowned fertility doctor on Wilshire Boulevard and a former Orange County police officer who fatally shot a 5-year-old boy while on duty.

A federal narcotics agent used the local headquarters of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration as his dealership’s mailing address, records show. A clothing shop in the middle of Los Angeles’ garment district is licensed to sell guns, as are offices of the Los Angeles Unified School District police force.

Across the border in Orange County it is more of the same. No more than 100 gun stores, pawnshops and sporting goods outlets actually sell firearms, but there are about 1,600 federally licensed dealers, virtually all the back-yard variety. On a per capita basis, Orange County has more licensed arms merchants than Los Angeles.

They have worked out of a Second Sole shoe store in Brea, a Westminster lumberyard, an El Toro gas station and a Yorba Linda bicycle shop. The ranks of licensees include police officers, television repairmen, the county’s director of housing and redevelopment, and the former landlord of a notorious topless bar in Santa Ana that was infiltrated by organized crime figures.

Hundreds of other dealerships--with names such as Guns R Us, the Arsenal and the Ammo Dump--can be found behind the doors of private homes, apartments, law firms and business suites. The vast majority of these “kitchen-table dealers” do not advertise in the Yellow Pages or hang signs promoting themselves. Many deny even having a federal firearms license.

ATF officials estimate that only about one in five holders of federal firearms licenses--known as FFLs--is in the business of selling guns and is legally entitled to a license. Most of the others are believed to be aspiring dealers or enthusiasts who use their licenses to buy guns for themselves at a discount.

“Like anything else in society,” said agency spokesman Jack Killorin, “there’s a certain amount of trust involved.”

Federal law prohibits anyone from holding a dealer’s license unless he or she has a firearms business or intends to open one, but the ATF rarely punishes violators. Officials say the agency is overburdened and has higher priorities than weeding out otherwise law-abiding citizens who misrepresent themselves when applying for a dealer’s license.

“The average criminal does not buy his guns from (federal license) holders,” said Andrew Molchan, president of the National Assn. of Federally Licensed Firearms Dealers.

Nonetheless, critics say, regulation and enforcement is so weak that no one knows how many Charles MacDonalds may be among licensed gun dealers.

Indeed, were it not for the Frontier Hotel’s security chief who alerted authorities, MacDonald might never have been investigated and prosecuted.

“By licensing all these people, the federal government has set up a black market to arm criminals,” said William Bridgewater, executive director of the National Alliance of Stocking Gun Dealers, which represents 15,000 firearms retailers and manufacturers. “You got a problem out there with kids shooting each other on the street--where do you think the guns are coming from?”

Over the past six months, The Times randomly examined more than 100 kitchen-table dealerships in Los Angeles County and interviewed dozens of federal regulators and local authorities. Among the findings:

* Background checks conducted by the ATF often are based on incomplete or outdated criminal records, allowing some undesirable applicants, including felons, to obtain gun dealer licenses.

* Most licenses are issued without the ATF conducting on-site inspections of proposed dealerships or face-to-face interviews with applicants.

* Once licensed, a dealer can go for years without being inspected, and some longtime license holders say they never have been visited by ATF officials.

* Despite requirements of their licenses, the vast majority of dealers are not open to the public and are not engaged in the business of selling guns.

* Many dealers acknowledge that they use their license to circumvent a state law that requires virtually everyone else in California to wait 15 days before taking delivery of a firearm.

* Most gun dealerships do not pay business taxes and have neither local nor state licenses necessary to legally conduct business.

* Local regulations require gun dealers to have security systems and keep their firearms in locked vaults, but many dealerships are operated out of houses, apartments and businesses with no special security.

For 10 years, Charles (Big Chuck) MacDonald occupied Room 744 of the Frontier Hotel, a $20-a-night flophouse on 5th Street in downtown Los Angeles. He lived off a $550 monthly Social Security check he received for various ailments and what MacDonald describes as “some psychological and emotional problems.”

“Brain damage,” explained the 6-foot-6, 370-pound MacDonald. “From drugs.”

One day in 1989, while browsing through a gun magazine, MacDonald was drawn to an advertisement: For $4.95, a private company would mail out an application kit to become a federally licensed firearms dealer. “Earn big money now,” the ad said.

It sounded good, except that MacDonald had a slight problem blocking his path to future wealth: his past.

As a teen-ager, records show, he received an undesirable discharge from the Air Force for drinking. He later joined the Army without disclosing his Air Force record. Soon after, he was court-martialed for unlawful enlistment, possession of an unauthorized pass, disobeying orders and escape.

MacDonald served more than 1 1/2 years at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Ft. Leavenworth, Kan., before being released and dishonorably discharged in 1954. Two years later, records show, he was arrested in Akron, Ohio, and placed on probation for theft and carrying a concealed weapon.

A move to California--and more trouble with the law--followed. Police records show he was twice arrested for burglary but not charged.

People with felony convictions and those with dishonorable discharges from the military are not supposed to get firearms dealer licenses.

MacDonald insisted that his military conviction did not constitute a felony but acknowledged lying about his dishonorable discharge when he applied for a gun dealer’s license. In 1989, the ATF granted him a license to sell guns out of his hotel room under the business name Chuck’s Guns.

The ATF, he said, does not check records very carefully “unless you’ve had some felonies recently.”

“I know some other guys that have felony convictions (that got licenses),” MacDonald said. “Quite a few.”

To get a three-year federal license to sell guns, an applicant must be at least 21 and fill out a two-page form that asks the applicant’s Social Security number, proposed business name and location, and hours of operation.

An applicant must state whether he is a felon, a fugitive, an illegal immigrant, a narcotics addict or whether he has ever been committed to a mental institution or dishonorably discharged from the military.

Answering yes to any of the questions will likely cause disqualification. Submitting bogus information on a dealer application can result in as much as $250,000 in fines and five years in prison.

Along with a $30 check or money order, each application is sent to a mail drop in Dallas, then forwarded to Atlanta, where technicians search a national computer database containing criminal rap sheet information.

The ATF is required by law to issue the applicant a license within 45 days unless a criminal record or other reason for disqualification is found.

Authorities acknowledge that the criminal records checked by ATF often are not updated or complete. Moreover, if a bogus name or Social Security number is submitted, the computer will indicate that the applicant has no criminal record--and the applicant in all likelihood will be issued a license.

After receiving an application, the ATF rarely conducts field checks of applicants and their proposed gun dealerships, nor does it require fingerprinting. Given the staggering amount of paperwork--60,000 new applications and 30,000 renewals each year--officials say there is neither the time nor the budget to check applicants more carefully.

“Can you lie and get an FFL and do harm with it? Sure you can,” Killorin said. “But the difference between peddling guns (illegally) and peddling dope is, guns can’t be flushed down the toilet. The more you do, the quicker you’ll be caught.”

Once a license is issued, AFT is prohibited from inspecting a dealer’s premises more than once a year. Such inspections, officials say, can determine at the very least whether dealers are keeping proper records of gun sales and storing firearms in a safe manner. If dealers do not appear to be in the gun business, their licenses can be lifted.

In Los Angeles, the typical FFL holder can expect to be contacted at least once by the ATF during the three years in which the license is valid, said Earl Kleckly, local chief of the agency’s compliance section.

Inspections are no more frequent than that, Kleckly said, because the local ATF office has only about a dozen compliance inspectors for all of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties--which have more than 4,000 dealers.

The same inspectors also are responsible for monitoring explosives storage, collecting tobacco taxes and checking the alcohol content of beverages.

Kleckly said his office has strategies to target errant firearms dealers--focusing on those in high-crime areas and others brought to the ATF’s attention by local law enforcement agencies.

“There is a reasonably good compliance history” in Los Angeles, Kleckly said. “There are law-abiding dealers, and then there are others.”

The Times found dozens of firearms dealers who say they are not in the gun business and have never been inspected by ATF but nonetheless have been permitted to renew their licenses repeatedly.

Many longtime licensees said they have never been contacted by telephone or in person by the ATF.

Records show that high school teacher John L. Woehler II of Baldwin Hills has never been inspected in the 14 years he has held a firearms dealer’s license under the name, Der Schrotflinter-- German for “The Shotgunner.”

“I never sold a shotgun,” Woehler said. “I just like them.”

Like Woehler, MacDonald was never inspected after being issued a dealer’s license, according to ATF records.

The difference was that MacDonald dealt a lot of guns.

“You could sell 50 a day if you had ‘em,” MacDonald said.

The cheap, small-caliber pistols that MacDonald said he ordered for $30 apiece from wholesalers around the country fetched as much as $100 on the street. MacDonald said he also made a tidy profit selling used California Highway Patrol .38-caliber revolvers obtained for $239 each.

The CHP is in the process of trading in 4,000 revolvers to Smith & Wesson for new, semiautomatic pistols. A Northridge-based firearms distributor, Interstate Arms Corp., is purchasing the used guns and reselling them to dealers.

“It’s one thing for a police department to take confiscated guns out and destroy them; they didn’t pay for them,” said Interstate’s president, Michael Arnstein. “But they’re not about to go out and destroy guns they paid for.”

A large number of MacDonald’s customers, according to federal authorities and others, included gang members, felons and drug dealers from Mexico.

“I remember one night, he sold this machine-gun-looking thing to a really bad-looking dude,” said David Johnson, the Frontier Hotel’s security chief who turned in MacDonald. “I asked him later who the guy was and he said a drug dealer from Sinaloa, Mexico.”

MacDonald confirmed that “lots of Mexicans come up here and buy guns from me,” including semiautomatic assault rifles. MacDonald said he also hauled suitcases of ammunition to Mexico, where an $8 box of bullets would sell for as much as $100 while a $300 handgun would command three times that amount.

He denied knowingly selling guns to criminals, but admitted doing business with virtually anyone so long as they did not look like a police officer.

“You gotta be a little careful,” MacDonald said, “who you’re selling to.”

Many other licensees said they did not obtain federal permits to sell guns but rather to circumvent California’s 15-day waiting period on gun purchases. The waiting period is intended to give the state’s Department of Justice time to check records and make sure the purchaser of a gun is mentally sound and has not been convicted of a serious crime. Last year, 5,859 would-be gun buyers, including 34 convicted murderers, were turned down because of their backgrounds.

Federally licensed dealers can order guns from wholesalers, even by telephone, then receive shipments directly and immediately, without state authorities checking their backgrounds.

Los Angeles attorney Lee G. Lipscomb, who collects shotguns as a hobby, said the red tape and inconvenience in having to wait to buy a gun was “100% of the reason” he got a dealer’s license.

‘I’m not saying it’s a bad law,” Lipscomb said of the waiting period. “I’ve obviously found a solution to it.”

Most dealers also do not register with the State Board of Equalization or local licensing agencies, according to records and officials. As a result, the state and municipalities may be losing thousands of dollars annually in sales tax and permit fees.

To legally sell more than two guns a year in California, a dealer must have a State Board of Equalization license and pay taxes with each transaction. Operating a gun business without state authorization is a misdemeanor, punishable by as much as $1,000 in fines and six months in jail, said California Assistant Atty. Gen. Paul Bishop.

In checking more than a dozen federally licensed dealerships operating out of homes or private offices, The Times found that only one had a State Board of Equalization business permit.

Gun dealers who do business in Los Angeles are also required to have a $300 permit from the city’s Police Commission, be fingerprinted and pay taxes if they plan to sell more than five guns annually.

There are more than 1,100 federally licensed gun dealers in the city of Los Angeles, records show, but fewer than 130 have Police Commission permits.

Roger Menez said he sells two or three guns a month to friends and acquaintances from his second-floor apartment near Koreatown. His dealership is known as The Arsenal.

Menez, a dispatcher for a shipping company, said he had a Police Commission permit to sell guns. Commission officials said there is no record that he has ever had a permit. Menez later could not be reached for comment.

“There’s probably a tremendous number of these people not complying,” said Detective Richard K. Rudell, who heads the Police Commission’s permit-processing section. “But we just don’t have the manpower to go out and look at every one of them.”

Licensed gun dealers often are not easy to locate.

There is, for example, no telephone number and no signs advertising Terry M. Cohen’s Aces and Eights. Cohen’s dealership--named after the “dead man’s hand” held by Wild Bill Hickok when he was gunned down in 1876--can be found inside the back door of a furniture moving and storage company on Vermont Avenue.

Cohen was not present when a Times reporter stopped in and he did not return several telephone messages. His wife, Linda, said that Cohen “sells mostly to police officers.”

The dealership has neither a Police Commission sales permit nor a State Board of Equalization business license, authorities said.

Active gun dealers in Los Angeles also are required to have a storefront location with proper zoning as well as an alarm system and a locked safe to prevent guns and ammunition from falling into the wrong hands. Security, however, does not appear to be a high priority among many license holders.

MacDonald kept his guns locked in his room, but at least one cache was stolen when someone broke in while he was in Mexico selling firearms. Another gun shipment was stolen before it even reached his room. “I got ripped off for a lot,” he said.

And there is Sherill W. Washington’s Ammo Dump, a licensed dealership in a duplex on Hickory Street in Watts. Washington was not home when a reporter visited. “They’ve gone for the day,” a neighbor said.

The door to the Ammo Dump, meanwhile, was standing open.

Concerned about the spread of gun-related violence nationwide, the U.S. Justice Department in April, 1991, launched operation “Trigger Lock” to target armed drug dealers and other criminals who use guns--but not necessarily gun dealers.

The ATF in 1990 recommended that 7,955 people nationwide be prosecuted for various violations of firearms laws. Of the total, 124--less than 2%--were licensed firearms dealers.

“With all the problems facing L.A., this is not one at the top of the (Justice Department’s) pile,” said Andrew L. Vita, who headed the local ATF field office before transferring to Washington last fall.

Prosecutors say that given their workload, they have to be selective when deciding whether to prosecute.

“It would have to be more than sporadic sales and a type of weaponry where you just can’t ignore it or slough it off,” said David Scheper, chief of the U.S. attorney’s criminal complaints division in Los Angeles.

Even though there were indications that MacDonald was selling guns to criminals, federal prosecutors were initially reluctant to take the case, according to Johnson, the security chief at the Frontier Hotel.

“At first,” Johnson said, “nobody at the U.S. attorney would take the case and people were getting hurt in the interim. The police kept asking (ATF agents): ‘When are you gonna arrest this guy?’ ”

Johnson said the ATF agents had to arrange several gun sales between MacDonald and a felon working undercover for the government before prosecutors would agree to file charges. Federal officials declined to discuss the matter.

One of MacDonald’s customers was a 25-year-old desk clerk at the Frontier, Robert Dwayne Daniels, also a felon. Daniels, court records show, had served a year in Alameda County Jail for burglary. He had also done time in the Los Angeles County Jail for receiving stolen property.

In November, 1990, Daniels was arrested in the lobby of the Frontier for carrying a concealed .380-caliber pistol purchased from MacDonald. Daniels was sentenced to 60 days in jail.

After his release, Daniels got another handgun from MacDonald--a .25-caliber Raven. Within weeks, Daniels put it to use.

On March 11, 1991, court records show, Daniels confronted a man on West 8th Street, accused him of stealing some gold neck chains and demanded them back. When the man refused, Daniels drew his pistol and shot him once in the chest.

Daniels was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced in October to nine years in state prison. In January, MacDonald pleaded guilty to four counts of violating federal laws, including lying on his dealer’s application about his criminal record and dishonorable discharge. He was sentenced to 46 months in federal prison.

“This community’s being held hostage,” said U.S. District Court Judge William D. Keller in sentencing MacDonald, “and it’s because of doggone guns.”

In a prison interview, MacDonald said he felt no responsibility for any of the firearms he sold. “Not my problem,” he shrugged. “I didn’t shoot anybody.”

But when asked whether he regretted having armed a man who did shoot and nearly kill someone, MacDonald looked away and reflected for a moment.

“You know,” he said finally, “that guy still owes me for that gun. He never paid me.”

The People Behind the Gun Licenses

* Federal regulations define a gun dealer as “a person who devotes time, attention and labor in dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or business”--but not “a person who makes occasional sales, exchanges or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby.”

* Under the Freedom of Information Act, The Times obtained from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms a list of the more than 3,000 dealers in Los Angeles and Orange counties. A random examination of more than 100 dealerships found the licenses being used for a variety of purposes. Among them:

JD’S GUN SHOP

If potential customers are looking for the gun shop owned by Joseph Dominic Abandonato, 70, they might have a hard time finding it. The licensed arms dealer has no business license, no advertising, no listed phone number and no store.

According to current ATF records, his business, JD’s Gun Shop, is at 9392 Gateshead Drive in Huntington Beach. It’s a five-bedroom home, but not his. Property records show it was sold by a relative in 1989.

In the 1980s, Abandonato emerged as a mystery figure in the short, violent history of the notorious Mustang Theater, a now-defunct topless establishment in Santa Ana. According to federal bankruptcy records, he made loans to the club’s owner, bought the theater property and allegedly received $36,000 from the Mustang without court approval during the club’s bankruptcy case.

The Mustang, which was owned by a convicted felon, was the scene of two slayings and an attempted murder involving organized crime figures. Arson fires ruined the premises in 1987 and 1988.

BOB’S GUNSMITHING

For money, Dhonghai (Bob) Pusavat of Huntington Beach directs Orange County’s housing and redevelopment division. For recreation, he enjoys target shooting, a hobby he helps maintain with a federal firearms license.

“For me mainly, my purpose is to relax and try to put five shots in the small circle,” said Pusavat, a former Buddhist monk who has recognized the mediative qualities associated with trying to hit the bull’s-eye. “It gives me something to focus my attention on.”

Pusavat, who has been a target shooter for 10 years, says he uses his federal firearms license to ship his prized target pistols to gunsmiths so they can work on them.