Running Guns up the Interstate

By Richard Lacayo

The term gunrunning brings to mind images of swift boats landing rifles on shadowy and foreign shores. But the gunrunning that plagues the U.S. these days is more a matter of illicit firearms stashed in vehicles rolling boldly up interstate highways. Federal law strictly limits the resale of weapons. However, that has not stanched a flood of firepower that travels from Southern states, where guns are quickly and easily bought, to Northern ones, where sales are more tightly regulated. Firearms bought in gun shops in Florida, Texas and Virginia -- the three largest supply states -- fetch top dollar when sold on the black market to drug dealers, street gangs and assorted thugs in Washington and New York City.

"With the huge profits to be made, gunrunners are flooding the market," laments federal firearms agent Phil Chojnacki in Houston. "You take off one group, and another springs up." In fact, the markup on black-market firearms is not bad. A .357-cal. magnum that sells for $250 in a Dallas gun shop will bring $700 on the streets of New York. Just $300 will buy a semiautomatic in Florida, which can be sold at the Northern end of the pipeline for $1,000 or more.

Drug dealers have been finding the gun trade a nice side business. In the past two years Jamaican drug gangs, known as "posses," that run the crack houses in Dallas have moved some 1,200 Southern firearms to other drug dealers in the North. Enterprising dope shippers can even arrange a "package deal" for their wealthy Northern buyers: a stolen luxury car that has drugs hidden in the door panels, with a cache of arms thrown in.

The driving force behind domestic arms smuggling is the discrepancy among state laws. Northern states such as New York and Massachusetts have waiting periods of several weeks on gun purchases. That gives authorities time to check buyers for a criminal record and makes it harder for miscreants to get weapons. Not so in Texas or many parts of the South, such as Florida, South Carolina and Virginia, where customers need only show a driver's license or other form of identification that certifies them as state residents.

That kind of ID is easily forged by out-of-state buyers. "People come into a gun shop with a Virginia driver's license, and the ink is barely dry," laments George N. Metcalf, Assistant U.S. Attorney in Richmond. "They buy half a dozen guns with cash, get into a car with New York license plates, and they are gone." Some gunrunners prefer to hire one or more "straw buyers," local Southerners paid as little as $100 for the use of their legitimate IDs to make the purchases. Through such means, gun smugglers often buy a dozen weapons or more at a time. Though gun dealers in some states are required to report multiple purchases, federal agents say sellers do not always cooperate.

Stopping this clandestine trade is almost impossible for agents of the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The weapons are transported by car or truck, aboard trains or stashed in the cargo hold of interstate buses and planes. Federal agents even uncovered one shipment sent by United Parcel Service and labeled "sewing-machine parts." Most of the time they move unimpeded by the kinds of inspections imposed on shipments from outside the U.S. Until more uniformity can be established among state gun laws, gun smuggling on the interstates will remain a flourishing trade.

With reporting by Elaine Shannon/Washington and Richard Woodbury/Dallas