Cheap Gun, Will Travel

The origins of the .22-cal. revolver that was used to shoot President Reagan are in Sontheim, West Germany. A picturesque town built along a tributary of the Danube, Sontheim is the home of Rohm GmbH, a 74-year-old firm that makes drilling equipment and cheap handgun parts. West Germans have little use for Rohm weapons. The country's gun ownership laws are strict, and the relatively few people who do qualify to possess handguns tend to choose Gun Seller Goldstein better-made and more expensive models. Thus, most Rohm gun parts--perhaps $1 million worth a year, although company officials refuse to be exact --are shipped through Bremen and Hamburg to the U.S., where there is one pistol for every four citizens, and where there is a flourishing market for cheap "Saturday night specials." Last year the U.S. imported 298,689 foreign handguns, most of them from Italy and West Germany, and 3.1 million gun parts.

American law closely regulates the importing of entire guns. But there are far fewer restrictions on bringing in gun parts that are then inserted into American-made frames.

RG Industries, Inc., which is partly controlled by Heinrich and Giinter Rohm of the German firm, employs about 200 people to do that kind of assembly work at a shabby white concrete building in the garment district of northwest Miami. The cheap alloy frame is smoothed with a file and then placed on an assembly line where the barrel and German parts are inserted. Then the metal is tinted a dark blue. RG Industries last year sold 190,000 such weapons, making it the nation's fifth largest handgun producer.

Because of its short (1 3/4-in.) barrel the model RG 14 revolver that Hinckley used cannot be sold legally in the Miami area. The one that Hinckley bought, serial number L731332, was shipped by Southern Gun distributors of nearby Opa-Locka, Fla., directly to Rocky's Pawn Shop on Elm Street in Dallas. This cluttered emporium, only a quarter of a mile from the site where President John Kennedy was shot 17 years ago, has a sticker on the door that reads GUNS DON'T CAUSE CRIME ANY MORE THAN FLIES CAUSE GARBAGE. In the window a red, green, blue and black sign advertises .22-cal. revolvers for $47.

"Hinckley did everything required to buy a gun," says Isaac "Rocky" Goldstein, 70, a cigar-chomping, gray-haired man who has run the shpp for 51 years. "People are going to blame us for selling the gun that shot the President, but we have no way of knowing. We don't even remember him."

Goldstein, who also sold the small handguns that were used in a series of gang shootings in New York City's Chinatown in 1978, has been shaken by events, however, and now says he is considering getting out of the gun business.

Hinckley purchased the ammunition that was used at another pawn shop, this one in Lubbock, Texas. The type of bullet he chose was interesting--and frightening. The cartridges were Devastators, made by Bingham Ltd. of Norcross, Ga. These projectiles, akin to dumdum bullets, contain a small aluminum canister filled with an explosive compound. They cost at least twelve times as much as ordinary .22-cal. slugs.

Upon impact the unstable compound is supposed to explode and fragment the bullet, although most of the ones that Hinckley shot, including the one that hit Reagan, failed to do so. Bingham spokesmen say that the Devastator was developed for use by sky marshals in hijacking cases. By fragmenting, the bullet would quickly incapacitate a person but would be less likely than an ordinary bullet to pass through him or to puncture the outer skin of an airplane. Because of manufacturing difficulties, the company stopped producing the Devastator last May.

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