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Atf probe gun sale Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021026/ap_on_re_us/sniper_background_check_2http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021026/ap_on_re_us/sniper_background_check_2
ATF Probing Sniper Gun Sale
Fri Oct 25,11:48 PM ET
By PAUL QUEARY, Associated Press Writer
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - A gun shop owner said Friday that federal agents are trying to determine whether his store sold the weapon used in the string of sniper shootings in suburban Washington, D.C.
The owner of Bull's Eye Shooter Supply in nearby Tacoma, Brian Borgelt, said agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have interviewed him and his employees.
According to Borgelt, agents were also looking at store records for the .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle seized when John Allen Muhammad and 17-year-old John Lee Malvo were arrested early Thursday in northern Maryland.
Borgelt wouldn't say whether the weapon was sold at the store, or who bought it.
"Regardless of the circumstances surrounding it, it's this hollow, empty feeling you can't describe — no matter how remote a connection," Borgelt said. "It's all of a sudden, going from swearing at this guy every day and then having some kind of affiliation, possibly."
ATF spokeswoman Martha Tebbenkamp said she could neither confirm nor deny agents are investigating Borgelt's business.
It is not clear how the pair obtained the gun found in their car. Ballistics tests have linked the gun to 11 of the 14 shootings around the nation's capital that left 10 people dead.
The gun was shipped in June from the Windam, Maine, manufacturer to a distributor in Tacoma, said Allen Faraday, Bushmaster's vice president for administration. Faraday would not say where the weapon was shipped.
Muhammad and Malvo had lived in Tacoma.
Muhammad could not have legally purchased a gun this summer because of a restraining order sought by his estranged wife. If he tried to buy a gun from a licensed dealer, a required computerized background-check should have blocked a sale.
In March 2000, a Pierce County Superior Court judge issued a restraining order ordering Muhammad not to harass, stalk or threaten his wife or their children.
Such restraining orders are among a long list of factors in federal law that disqualify a person for buying firearms.
Tebbenkamp said a federal form specifically asks whether the prospective buyer is under a restraining order.
Restraining orders are in the National Instant Check System — the FBI (news - web sites) background check system firearms dealers are required to use. The federal law that mandates background checks requires NICS to search all available databases.
Officials with Pierce County and the Washington State Patrol say the restraining order was put in the background check database right away.
"They were in the system the day that they were filed," said Gerry Wynne, a legal assistant in the Pierce County Superior Court clerk's office.
In late 1999 — before the protective order was issued — Muhammad passed a background check and bought a similar rifle at Welcher's Gun Shop in Tacoma.
Muhammad sold that weapon back to Welcher's in May, said John Welcher, the shop's owner. Welcher said Muhammad bought the weapon for $800 and sold it back for $500.
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