A History of Mental Instability--and Man Still Gets His License

You can have a history of mental illness, shoot yourself while playing fast draw, and have 22 heart attacks in 14 years and still get a license to sell guns from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

Just ask Robert Raymond Brinkman, who got his gun dealer’s license four years ago and hopes someday to open a gun shop in Eagle Rock.

Brinkman, 39, said he has been disabled since 1978 when he suffered a nervous breakdown and “multiple personality changes” as a result of marital problems. He voluntarily spent 15 days in a hospital, he said, but left “when I found out they couldn’t help me. So I got out and straightened my life out myself.”

Asked about his present condition, Brinkman said:

“I found that line between being stupid and being strange. That’s a fine line that nobody wants to walk on. You’ve got like 10 lines you can walk on. . . . As long as you walk on one, they leave you alone. I’m quite straight.”

In 1982, according to Brinkman, state officials re-evaluated his condition and determined that he was no longer eligible for psychiatric disability payments. “So I went to court and I had a heart attack,” Brinkman said.

He has had 22 heart attacks in the past 14 years, Brinkman said. The last attack, he said, occurred in March and he spent 28 days hospitalized, but said he could not remember in which hospital.

Brinkman said he has shot himself--or been wounded by others--on at least four occasions.

The first time, he said, was in 1973 in Angeles National Forest when “some joker” shot him in the leg with a 12-gauge shotgun. The wound, Brinkman said, did not require hospitalization.

Two years later, while at a firing range, Brinkman said he grudgingly agreed to let a fellow shooter test-fire some .44 Magnum cartridges that Brinkman had loaded with extra gunpowder.

“The first round took off the top of his head and his rear (gun) sight hit me in the forehead,” Brinkman said. “He died and I was in the hospital for six months. At least I had enough witnesses to show I didn’t do it on purpose.

“I was into stupidity,” Brinkman added. “I am not into stupidity anymore.”

In 1984, while toying with a .357-caliber revolver--”you know, like Quick Draw McGraw”--Brinkman accidentally shot himself in the right leg. The wound, he said, causes him to walk with a cane.

About three years ago, Brinkman said, he was caught in a cross-fire between rival gang members in his native Highland Park and suffered a .22-caliber bullet wound, again to the right leg. He was hospitalized, he said, for two weeks.

Brinkman said he has used his dealer’s license to sell only one gun--in November, 1989, when he sold a .380-caliber pistol to an undercover Los Angeles policeman. The officer, whom he described as a friend, was slain a month later while on duty, Brinkman said.

Records show no indication of a peace officer being killed on the job anywhere in Los Angeles County within the six months that preceded December, 1989, or the six months that followed.

Brinkman said he could not reveal the deceased officer’s name because “I have been told not to by the Police Department”--an assertion dismissed as preposterous by a department spokesman.

Since getting his license, Brinkman has never been inspected by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, agency records show.

ATF spokesman Jack Killorin said Brinkman would have had to be judged mentally incompetent by a court or found to be otherwise ineligible before being denied a license to sell firearms.

“The fact that you have been under treatment for mental conditions . . . does not disqualify you,” Killorin said. “The law’s the law.”