EMAIL DETAILS

Seeking Gun or Selling One, Web Is a Land of Few
Rules<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/us/seeking-gun-or-selling-one-web-is-a-land-of-few-rules.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&>
By
MICHAEL LUO<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/michael_luo/index.html>,
MIKE McINTIRE<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/mike_mcintire/index.html>and
GRIFF
PALMER<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/griff_palmer/index.html>

The want ads posted by the anonymous buyer on Armslist.com, a sprawling
free classified ads Web site for guns, telegraphed urgency.

Feb. 20: “Got 250 cash for a good handgun
something.reliable<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/ArmsList/omar-2-20.gif#media/omar220>.”


Feb. 27: “I got 200 250 cashlooking for a good handgun please let me know
what u got.<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/ArmsList/omar-2-27.gif#media/omar227>”


Feb. 28: “Looking to buy some 9 mm ammo and not at a crazy
price.<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/ArmsList/omar-2-28.gif#media/omar228>”


The intentions and background of the prospective buyer were hidden, as is
customary on such sites. The person posting these ads, however, left a
phone number, enabling The New York Times to trace them to their source:
Omar Roman-Martinez, 29, of Colorado Springs, who has a pair of felony
convictions for burglary and another for motor vehicle theft, as well as a
misdemeanor domestic violence conviction — all of which bar him from having
guns. Yet he was so determined he even offered to trade a tablet computer
or a vintage Pepsi machine for firearms.

When questioned in a telephone interview, Mr. Roman-Martinez said he
ultimately decided not to buy a weapon. He also insisted that a
9-millimeter handgun he posted for
sale<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/ArmsList/omar-3.gif#media/omar1>on
the Web site last month belonged to someone else.

“I’m a felon,” he said. “I can’t possess firearms.”

The mere fact that Mr. Roman-Martinez was seeking to buy and sell guns on
Armslist underscores why extending background checks to the growing world
of online sales has become a centerpiece of new gun legislation being taken
up in the Senate this week. With no requirements for background checks on
most private transactions, a Times examination found, Armslist and similar
sites function as unregulated bazaars, where the essential anonymity of the
Internet allows unlicensed sellers to advertise scores of weapons and
people legally barred from gun ownership to buy them.

The bipartisan Senate compromise under consideration would require that
background checks be conducted through federally licensed dealers on all
Internet and gun show sales. Gun control advocates argue that such checks
might have prevented shootings like that of Zina Haughton, 42, who was
killed in October with two other women by her husband, Radcliffe, even
though a restraining
order<http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/in-last-hearing-before-shooting-wife-told-court-of-her-fear-6i7alr0-175320341.html>barred
him from having guns. Mr. Haughton simply contacted a private seller
on Armslist and handed over $500 in a McDonald’s parking lot for a
.40-caliber semiautomatic pistol and three magazines.

Seeking a glimpse into the largely hidden online gun market, The Times
assembled a database and analyzed several months of ads from Armslist,
which has become the dominant player in the arena, and examined numerous
smaller sites.

Over the past three months, The Times identified more than 170,000 gun ads
on Armslist. Some were for the same guns, making it difficult to calculate
just how many guns were actually for sale. Even so, with more than 20,000
ads posted every week, the number is probably in the tens of thousands.

Notably, 94 percent of the ads were posted by “private parties,” who,
unlike licensed dealers, are not required to conduct background checks.

Besides Mr. Roman-Martinez, the Times investigation led to Gerard Toolin,
46, of Walterboro, S.C., who is a fugitive from the Rhode Island police and
has two outstanding felony warrants as well as a misdemeanor warrant. His
legal status bars him from owning guns, but he was recently seeking to buy
an AK-47 assault rifle on Armslist and was also trying to trade a Marlin
rifle<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/ArmsList/toolin-2.gif#media/toolin2>.
He posted photos to his Facebook account of an AK-47 he had already
purchased, along with a variety of other guns.

There was also Martin Fee, who has a domestic battery conviction in Florida
and other arrests and convictions in Florida and New Jersey, including for
drug possession, burglary and larceny. He was selling a Chinese SKS rifle
on the classified section of another Web site, BudsGunShop.com.

The examination of Armslist raised questions about whether many sellers are
essentially functioning as unlicensed firearms dealers, in contravention of
federal law. The law says that people who “engage in the business” of
selling firearms need to obtain a license and conduct background checks on
customers. While the definition of engaging in business is vague, The Times
found that more than two dozen people had posted more than 20 different
guns for sale in a several-month span.

Among them was Joshua Lovejoy, 32, who since November has advertised more
than 100 guns on Armslist, mostly in Canton, Ohio, ranging from AR-15
assault rifles to Glock 19 semiautomatic pistols. He once listed more than
20 guns in a single
ad<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/ArmsList/lovejoy-1.gif#media/lovejoy1>.
He insisted in a telephone interview, however, that he had sold only a few.

Then there was Ron Metz, 49, who has advertised more than 80 guns from
Anderson, S.C., since February. Mr. Metz said in an interview he had needed
money, so he started selling some guns and trading for others. He also
bought other guns, which he turned around and sold as well. He said he had
no real idea how many he had sold, guessing that it was more than a dozen.
He never keeps any records and does not do any background checks,
explaining: “I can just sort of read people.”

“You think I broke a law?” he asked.

* ‘A Gun Show That Never Ends’*

Armslist was the brainchild of Jonathan Gibbon and Brian Mancini, friends
who attended the United States Air Force Academy and then transferred to
the University of Pittsburgh.

Mr. Gibbon, who did not respond to requests for comment, said in a
2010 interview
with Human Events<http://www.humanevents.com/2010/03/16/interview-with-the-founders-of-armslistcom>,
a conservative Web site, that he got the idea for Armslist during the
summer of 2007 when he saw that the classifieds Web site Craigslist.com had
decided to ban gun-related ads “because a few users cried out for it.” Mr.
Gibbon, who went on to law school at the University of Oklahoma, where he
founded the Second Amendment Club, said he had been inspired to “create a
place for law-abiding gun owners to buy and sell online without all of the
hassles of auctions and shipping.”

Mr. Mancini, who designed the site, recently left the company. Mr. Gibbon
remains the site’s owner, while also practicing law in Pennsylvania,
according to his profile on LinkedIn. Armslist LLC, registered with the
Oklahoma secretary of state, lists an office suite in Pittsburgh as its
business address.

When asked by Human Events to describe the site, Mr. Gibbon said: “Imagine
a gun show that never ends.”

Gun shows have long been a source of concern for gun control advocates and
law enforcement officials, because many allow unregulated sales without
background checks. Web sites make such transactions far more widely
available, with just a few clicks of a mouse.

A 2011 undercover
investigation<http://www.nyc.gov/html/cjc/downloads/pdf/nyc_pointclickfire.pdf>by
the City of New York examined private party gun sellers on a range of
Web sites, including Armslist, to see if they would sell guns to someone
who said that they probably could not pass a background check. (Federal law
bars sales to any person the seller has reason to believe is prohibited
from purchasing firearms). Investigators found seventy-seven of 125 online
sellers agreed to sell the weapons anyway.

Armslist posts a disclaimer on its home page, urging users to “comply with
local, state, federal, and international law.” But it also makes clear that
the site “does not become involved in transactions between parties.”

What the site does do is make it simple for anyone seeking to buy a gun
without a background check, enabling users to filter gun ads in their state
by ones being sold by private parties.

Federal law places one significant restriction on transactions among
private parties, barring people from directly selling guns to people in
other states who are not licensed firearms dealers. Licensed dealers must
act as intermediaries in transactions across state lines and perform
background checks. But an examination of ads on the Web site shows that
illegal interstate transactions can occur.

An ad for a “new in box” Ruger rifle posted on April 1 in Indianapolis
stated that if the buyer was out of state, the seller would ship to the
buyer’s “front door,” “person to private person.”

A seller on another ad, posted April 2, in Brighton, Colo., vented about
repeated no-shows in his previous attempts to sell the gun, so he made
clear, “No more out of state.”

Many ads simply require the transactions occur “face to face.” Some even
provide assurances: “no questions asked” and “no paperwork.”

The loose online atmosphere was evident in the case of an Arizona gun
dealer, Walter Young, who pleaded guilty last week to a federal gun charge
stemming from an investigation into his sale of a .50-caliber rifle, dozens
of gun kits and thousands of rounds of ammunition to an anonymous buyer who
contacted him on Gunbroker.com.

Mr. Young — a Tea
Party<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/tea_party_movement/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>activist
who posted a YouTube video in February suggesting he was being
persecuted for criticizing the government — told federal agents he shipped
everything to an address in Texas near the Mexican border, without even
knowing the identity of the recipient, according to court records. After
initially lying to investigators, he admitted looking the other way in his
online dealings, records show.

“Young stated there was a general ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy in the gun
world when it came to wanting to know why a person was purchasing a
particular item, and for that reason he did not question people he sold
items to,” federal prosecutors said in a court filing.

Other cases have had deadly consequences.

In 2011, Dmitry Smirnov, a Canadian resident, contacted Benedict Ladera,
from Kent, Wash., via Armslist, expressing interest in a Smith & Wesson
.40-caliber pistol that Mr. Ladera had posted for sale.

Mr. Ladera, who had sold about 20 guns on Armslist over the previous year,
agreed to meet at a casino but increased the price of the handgun to $600,
from $400, because he was from out of state, according to court records.
After buying the gun, Mr. Smirnov drove to Chicago, where he stalked Jitka
Vesel, a woman he had briefly dated a few years earlier, and on April 13,
2011, shot and killed her. Mr. Smirnov turned himself into authorities and
was later sentenced to life in prison.

Federal authorities also arrested Mr. Ladera, who pleaded guilty to making
an illegal transfer of a firearm to a nonstate resident and was sentenced
to one year in prison. Last year, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
filed a wrongful-death
lawsuit<http://bradycampaign.org/media/press/view/1548>against
Armslist on behalf of Ms. Vesel’s family.

In the case of Radcliffe Haughton, the Wisconsin man who killed his wife,
the person who sold him the gun on Armslist told federal investigators that
he had checked Mr. Haughton’s driver’s license to make sure he was a
Wisconsin resident. He also said he asked Mr. Haughton if he was prohibited
from having firearms, but he indicated he was not.

Despite these cases, it appears that prosecutions of people who illegally
buy and sell guns on the Internet are relatively unusual. A review of
nearly 100 court cases in which federal authorities seized guns over the
last year found that in very few instances were Internet transactions the
focus of the investigations.

*Anonymity Is the Rule*

Identifying the people who buy and sell guns on these online forums is
impossible in most cases because the sites protect the anonymity of their
users.

On Armslist, potential buyers can contact sellers directly through the Web
site, without making their contact information public. In some cases where
people included phone numbers in their ads, The Times tried to trace them —
a task made more difficult because most were unlisted cellphones — and
determine if the people had criminal records or other firearms
prohibitions.

Many numbers led nowhere. Among the ones that were traceable, most people
examined had clean records, or had only misdemeanor convictions that did
not disqualify them from having weapons. In some cases that raised
questions, it was impossible to conclusively verify identities. But several
people emerged who clearly should not be buying or selling guns.

Omar Roman-Martinez spent a little more than a year in prison, getting out
in 2010, after pleading guilty to second-degree burglary for breaking into
a car with some friends, taking a key and an address, and then going to the
person’s house, where they made off with jewelry, a safe and electronics.
He had prior felony convictions for burglarizing an auto-parts store and
for stealing a car from a car dealership, and a misdemeanor assault
conviction for biting and repeatedly using a telephone receiver to hit the
woman he was living with, according to court and police records.

Mr. Roman-Martinez initially posted general inquiries on Armslist, looking
to buy a handgun for cash and then ammunition. He also tried to sell a
Jimenez Arms 9-millimeter handgun. In mid-March, he offered to trade a
tablet computer<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/ArmsList/omar-5.gif#media/omar3>that
“has the works” for a handgun or pistol grip shotgun. Later, he posted
an ad offering a “working condition 1970s pepsi machine” for “nice firearms
or one nice one.”

He explained in the
ad<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/ArmsList/omar-2.gif#media/omar2>:
“These machines are very wanted and most dont work mine does shot me an
offer.”

When queried, Mr. Roman-Martinez initially acknowledged the ads but tried
to sidestep, saying that he never acquired a gun and that the one he was
trying to sell was not his. By the end of the conversation, however, he
denied he had anything to do with the ads.

“I’ve heard of Armslist,” he said. “Of course, everybody has. I don’t have
anything posted on there.”

The conversation unfolded similarly with Gerard Toolin, the man with
outstanding felony warrants from Rhode Island who is now living in South
Carolina. The charges against Mr. Toolin, which date to 2002, relate to
allegations he defrauded people through his heating and cooling business.
He skipped out on court appearances and fled the state, records show.

He posted an ad on Armslist on April
9<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/ArmsList/toolin-1.gif#media/toolin1>,
in which he wrote, “I am looking to buy A ak-47.” Initially unaware of who
was calling, Mr. Toolin eagerly explained to a reporter that he already had
one and was looking to acquire a second.

After the reporter identified himself and asked about his warrants, Mr.
Toolin said, “Who says I’m buying a weapon for myself?”

But Mr. Toolin had also posted several ads in March, seeking to trade a
Marlin 336SC rifle for a 12-gauge tactical shotgun — a combat-style weapon.
Pictures posted on Mr. Toolin’s Facebook page, in which he “likes”
Armslist’s Facebook page, made clear that he possessed an array of weapons.
He posted a picture of an AK-47 in mid-March, saying: “I would like
everyone to welcome the newest member of my family ... I adopted her
yesterday.” Another photo posted in late November showed him loaded down
with weapons, including an assault rifle and several pistols strapped to
his body. He captioned the snapshot: “I don’t think I have enough maybe one
or two more.”

When asked about the photographs, Mr. Toolin said: “You sure they’re real
guns? How do you know they’re not reproductions?”

Minutes after the conversation, he took his Facebook account offline.

The Times also found Martin Fee, of Vero Beach, Fla., while examining a
listing for a Chinese SKS
rifle<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/multimedia/bundles/projects/2013/ArmsList/martin-1.gif#media/fee1>on
Budsgunshop.com. In the ad, Mr. Fee said he would not sell to anyone living
in New York, New Jersey or “the People’s Republic of California.” A Twitter
account belonging to “Marty Fee” of Vero Beach is filled with vitriolic
postings about President Obama and liberals, including one that says the
president and attorney general “should be chained n shot.”

Mr. Fee, 45, has an arrest record dating back decades, and it is difficult
to verify which charges resulted in convictions. But a domestic battery
conviction from 1999, resulting from a dispute between Mr. Fee and his
then-wife that turned physical, appeared to disqualify him from possessing
firearms.

Reached by phone last week, Mr. Fee said he had sold the gun and had it
shipped to a licensed dealer. When a reporter asked him how he could own a
gun with his domestic violence conviction, he backpedaled, insisting that
the SKS rifle was not actually his, and that he “posted it up there for a
friend of mine.”

“I never saw the weapon, I never touched the weapon,” he said, declining to
identify the friend. He then ended the call. Shortly thereafter, his ad
disappeared from the Web site.

*When Is a ‘Seller’ a ‘Dealer’?*

Under current law, the question of when a background check must occur
depends on who is selling the gun. Federal regulations require licensed
dealers to perform checks, but the legal definition of who must be licensed
is blurry. Regulations define a dealer as a “person who devotes time,
attention, and labor to dealing in firearms as a regular course of trade or
business with the principal objective of livelihood and profit.” People
engaged in only “occasional sales” for their personal collections, or for a
hobby, are exempted.

But precisely how many guns it takes for the “occasional” seller to become
a dealer is not specified.

The design of the Armslist site makes it difficult to tie together all of
the ads of individual sellers in order to identify the most active. Again,
a phone number makes the task easier. Using phone numbers, as well as
computer analysis, The Times connected all the ads for some sellers,
including Mr. Lovejoy, who has advertised scores of guns for sale on
Armslist over the last few months. One ad in January listed more than 20
guns, including several AR-15 assault rifles and an array of AMD-65s, a
Hungarian variant of the AK-47.

In a telephone interview, Mr. Lovejoy, who is a paramedic and is studying
to become a nurse, described his buying and selling of guns on Armslist and
other sites as a “hobby.”

“A lot of times when I get rid of something that I have, I don’t make a
penny on it,” he said.

Mr. Lovejoy said he always made sure to look at buyers’ driver’s licenses
to check that they were Ohio residents and that he would occasionally
record a bill of sale, with phone numbers, but no names and addresses. He
said he supported proposals to require background checks on Internet sales.

“It would give me more peace of mind,” he said.

While Mr. Lovejoy was willing to discuss his ads with a reporter, other
Armslist sellers reacted differently. Noel Lee Velarde, who has advertised
more than 30 guns out of Flint, Mich., on Armslist dating back to late
January, twice hung up on a reporter.

Bob Vivona, 69, who describes himself as an Army veteran and retired police
detective sergeant, has advertised more than 20 guns on Armslist out of
Missouri going back to February. Even though it is not required by law, he
said, he takes it upon himself to look people’s names up in a statewide
online court database. He said he was simply getting rid of guns he had
bought but found he did not like, insisting there was nothing wrong with
the number of guns he was selling.

“It’s not an issue,” he said. “It’s the Second Amendment.”

Sarah Cohen contributed reporting. Jack Styczynski and Jack Begg
contributed research