Twisting Trail of Gun That Changed Mexico’s History : Firearms: Brazilian-made revolver began as a legal weapon, then vanished until it claimed candidate’s life.

Like almost every other American firearm used in a crime, the gun that changed Mexican history started out on the right side of the law.

Manufactured nearly two decades ago in Brazil, the .38-caliber Taurus that killed presidential front-runner Luis Donaldo Colosio originally was offered for sale at the Bob Chow Gun Shop in San Francisco--a store then owned by a world-class marksman who once competed for the U.S. Olympic shooting team.

The revolver was first purchased in 1977 by a Bay Area security executive who objected to supplying his unskilled guards with guns, but reluctantly agreed to buy this one after a client with a vault full of valuables insisted on an armed patrol.

Three years later, the company and its assets were sold to Stanley Smith Security, a huge Texas-based conglomerate.

But between 1980, when Stanley Smith presumably acquired the gun, and March 23, when an assailant in Tijuana fired it at Colosio’s head, there are no records of where it traveled, of how many hands it may have passed through, or of who may have supplied it to Mario Aburto Martinez, the 23-year-old factory worker who allegedly pulled the trigger.

“It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack,” said Ed Gleba, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which closed its investigation last week without being able to trace the revolver’s history. “There could be a million explanations for what happened to that gun.”

In that respect, the story of this cheap, antiquated six-shooter--what one expert called “the Pinto of handguns”--is a typically American tale.

*

There are nearly 220 million firearms circulating in the United States, one for virtually every man, woman and child. The vast majority of the weapons are owned by law-abiding people who buy them for protection, hobby or sport.

But in a nation where gunfire also claims 35,000 lives a year, there is no system designed to account for those weapons, to record their movement, or to prevent them from slipping out of legitimate channels and into the hands of the violent or deranged.

“The fact that this gun dropped off the radar screen--that’s just business as usual in the world of firearms,” said Erik Larson, the author of “Lethal Passage,” a new book that traces the path of a single handgun.

In Mexico, official policies are far more stringent, prohibiting the sale of all firearms to anyone outside law enforcement or the military. But the reality is that weapons flow freely from the United States into many border towns, lured primarily by the narcotraficante underworld.

Although motorists approaching Tijuana are met with black and white signs that warn: “Guns Illegal in Mexico,” the demands of a tourist economy come first. Unlike the long lines that mark the return to the United States, most visitors entering Mexico are waved in without a word.

“It’s about as difficult to get a gun in Mexico as it is to obtain a fraudulent green card up here,” said Wayne Cornelius, director of the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at UC San Diego. “It’s not as if Mario Aburto had to get on a bus to San Francisco and go looking for his favorite gun store.”

The .38-caliber Taurus that allegedly landed in Aburto’s hands is not the kind of weapon that tends to make headlines in either country these days, not when there’s access to high-powered semiautomatic rifles, laser sights, armor-piercing ammunition and combat-size ammunition magazines.

But even after 17 years, the $50 revolver proved to be just as deadly, living up to Taurus’ twin hallmarks of “quality and price.”

“It’s not as pretty as my $800 gun and it’s not real cool,” Gleba said. “But obviously it’ll do the job. It’s a cheap killing machine.”

If it were not for America’s seemingly insatiable appetite for handguns, a good number of the 2,200 employees at Forjas Taurus, located in the south Brazilian river town of Porto Alegre, would probably be out of a job.

Instead, Taurus has become one of the world’s leading handgun exporters, producing more than 100 models and growing into an $85-million-a-year powerhouse, despite Brazil’s own troubled economy. The United States, which annually purchases about 150,000 Taurus handguns, accounts for 60% of the company’s revenues.

“There is, undoubtedly, no market for guns in the world as big as the United States,” Taurus President Carlos Alberto Murgel said.

Domestic manufacturers still dominate the U.S. handgun market, producing more than 1.5 million pistols and revolvers a year for the nation’s 245,000 federally licensed dealers. However, imported weapons are not far behind, often topping 1 million a year, according to federal authorities.

Like most arms manufacturers, Murgel disavows any responsibility for the small percentage of people who misuse his merchandise. It is unfortunate that a Taurus became linked to one of Mexico’s most shocking political assassinations, he said, but violence should be blamed on criminals and the governments that fail to stop them.

“Guns,” he said, “are not the problem.”

This .38-caliber revolver could not have begun its journey in any steadier hands.

*

Bob Chow, who for 35 years owned a gun shop in San Francisco’s Mission District, competed on the U.S. Olympic shooting team during the 1948 games in London. He placed 13th in the 25-meter rapid-fire match--an event that requires marksmen to shoot 60 rounds at a series of silhouette targets in about 60 seconds.

The shop, now called High Bridge Arms, still has a trophy case full of Chow’s shooting prizes, most of them gold figurines of a man taking aim, his left hand on his hip and his right arm fully extended.

“He’s a tough old man, very tough,” said Masashi Takahashi, who bought the store in 1988 from Chow, now believed to be in his late 80s. One of the first things Takahashi did was renovate the shop’s second-floor apartment, which Chow had refused to rent for fear that a tenant would be tempted to cut a hole in the floor and steal all of his weapons.

“He doesn’t trust people,” Takahashi said.

The security executive who first bought the Taurus tends to share those doubts.

Concerned about the potential for attacks by political extremists, as well as the hassle of being hounded by news crews, the executive granted The Times an exclusive interview on the condition that his identity not be revealed.

“I don’t want any publicity,” said the 62-year-old retiree, sitting in the living room of his apartment in the placid Contra Costa County community of Lafayette. “I also don’t want anyone, from whatever side, knocking on my door with a rat-a-tat-tat.”

The executive, a veteran of the security world in Los Angeles during the turbulent 1960s, formed his own company in 1976. He soon was employing about 100 guards and serving a variety of high-profile Bay Area clients that included prominent retail outlets and financial institutions.

Like many security executives, at least those who count themselves among the industry’s more responsible practitioners, he frowned on the use of armed guards because of the liability risks.

“You shouldn’t put guns on people in public places,” he said. “Sooner or later, the guns go off.”

But less than a year into his business, a valued client with a vault insisted on armed protection. Assured that his guard would have no contact with the public, the executive acquiesced. The only problem was that he had no gun.

So, in 1977, the security executive paid a visit to Bob Chow, hoping to find an inexpensive .38-caliber revolver, something without the firepower or bullet-capacity of a more sophisticated weapon.

“Anything else is too dangerous,” he said. A six-round revolver can be loaded with just five bullets, he said, leaving the hammer set on an empty round “so that if the mother drops, it ain’t gonna go off.”

The .38-caliber Taurus he selected, modeled after a popular Smith & Wesson, was one of about 225,000 handguns legally sold in California that year. As state law has required since 1975, the security executive waited 15 days while officials conducted a background check before he could pick up the weapon.

Since then, nearly 5 million handguns have been legally sold in California, with last year setting an all-time record of 429,217. During that time, fewer than 1% of handgun sales have been denied by state officials, who check for a history of criminal or psychiatric problems.

“After I learned what happened (in Mexico), I suppose I was stunned or shocked or flabbergasted, but not really surprised,” said the security executive, who was visited by federal agents just hours after the Tijuana assassination. “Goodness knows, if he didn’t have this gun, he would have gotten another.”

The security executive told federal firearms agents that in 1980 he sold his contracts and assets to Stanley Smith, which was founded in 1928 and has grown to be the fifth-largest security firm in the nation. Based in San Antonio, the company employs 8,000 guards, about 6% of whom are armed.

But when the agency contacted Stanley Smith, company officials could find no record of the weapon, either in Texas or at their parent company’s Australian headquarters. Although the purchase of the Bay Area firm represented a relatively minor acquisition--the assets were valued only at about $3,000--a Stanley Smith spokesman said such a weapon would have been carefully screened.

“We don’t have anything to indicate that we ever received it,” said Patrick Schindler, vice president of corporate development. “At this point, we’re assuming we didn’t.”

And there the paper trail stops.

Under federal law, firearms sold between private parties do not need to be reported. Until 1991, the same was true for California. Since then, the state has required private transactions to be made through a licensed gun dealer, who is supposed to hold the weapon for 15 days while officials conduct a background check on the buyer and seller.

But the state agency that reviews those applications has no enforcement authority and no way of knowing how many people skirt the process--avoiding the $24 filing fee and the chance of a denial.

“It’s one of those things that’s against the law, but if nobody sees it, how are you going to enforce it?” said Ann Norman, an analyst with the state Department of Justice.

There are, of course, a large number of gun enthusiasts who believe that any attempt to regulate the sale of firearms infringes on their constitutional rights.

Even those who concede that some restrictions are appropriate contend that most government controls only inconvenience the large majority of responsible gun owners, instead of targeting criminally minded people who don’t obtain their weapons through official channels in the first place.

“If somebody steals a gun or buys it on the black market, they don’t create a paper trail to begin with,” said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, an educational and legal defense fund. “Even if there was one, quite frankly, it would be meaningless. Tracing a gun doesn’t help prove who committed the crime.”

Most gun control advocates believe firearms are still far too easy to obtain, even for law-abiding people who end up using them in domestic quarrels, accidents or suicides.

Because virtually every weapon that falls into criminal hands was originally acquired by legal means, groups such as Handgun Control Inc. are pushing for laws that would require the registration of all handgun purchases, including private transactions.

“We think people will become more responsible about their weapons if they know the paper trail will end with them,” said Susan Whitmore, director of communications for the national lobbying group.

In the end, however, people bent on murder usually get their way. Whether by conspiracy or happenstance, this revolver landed in the hands of an assailant whose audacity would leave Mexico reeling.

Aburto, who in a recent poem wrote that “the forces of peace are greater than the forces of war,” purportedly confessed to taking target practice before the point-blank attack.

It seems unlikely that he would have been admitted to any of the firing ranges around Tijuana. The ranges--like the Berrendo Club on the old Ensenada highway--are exclusive fraternities where the names of members are posted on the wall, complete with a catalogue of their weaponry, including make, model and serial number.

What matters most is that 11 days ago, he arrived in the shantytown of Lomas Taurinas, which, like the handgun, draws its name from the potent imagery of the bull. As the man expected to be Mexico’s next president greeted some of Tijuana’s poorest voters, Aburto allegedly worked his way through the crowded dirt square and stuck the gun to Luis Donaldo Colosio’s head.

Only then did the journey of this .38-caliber Taurus come to an end.

*

Correspondent Mac Margolis in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this story.

Deadly Path

The .38-caliber Taurus revolver used to kill Mexico’ leading presidential candidate was legally purchased in 1977 to arm a guard employed by a Bay Area security company. By 1980, the gun’s paper trail already had evaporated and the weapon, one of more than 200 million in circulation in the U.S., soon slipped through the cracks. This is all investigators know:

1977: The revolver, imported from Brazil, is offered for sale at the Bob Chow Gun Shop in San Francisco’s Mission District.

1977: The head of a Bay Area security business buys it for about $50 after one of his clients requests an armed patrol.

1980: The security company and its assets are purchased by Stanley Smith Security Inc., a large Texas-based firm, which says it can find no record of having ever received the gun.

March 23, 1994: Mario Aburto Martinez, a 23-year-old factory worker, allegedly uses the revolver to fatally wound Mexico’s leading presidential candidate during a campaign rally in Tijuana.