Criminals have access to weapons

Police, dealers say a convicted felon like Wise would have had little difficulty getting a gun

Web posted September 22, 1997

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By Tracie Powell
Staff Writer

Arthur Hastings Wise had no business with a gun.

Mr. Wise had been convicted of three felonies - robbing a Thomson bank in 1979, and theft by receiving stolen property and interstate transportation of stolen property in Aiken in 1972.

Mr. Wise spent about three and a half years in prison following his conviction for robbing the bank, according to records from the Georgia Department of Corrections.

He spent most of the time at Lee Correctional Institute in Leesburg, a medium-security prison. He was paroled Nov. 16, 1983.

Federal and South Carolina laws prohibit convicted felons from buying or possessing a gun. So the questions arise - how and where did Mr. Wise get the weapon police said he used to kill earlier this week?

It's easy, said local law enforcement officials, gun dealers and gun-control advocates.

``He could have found it. He could have bought it from an unlicensed person, a flea market, a truck stop, in the men's bathroom at a club, off the streets, or won it in a crap game,'' said Steven Fishman, a licensed gun dealer in Richmond County.

A person can go anywhere and buy a gun illegally, said Richmond County Chief Deputy Ronald Strength.

``A person can steal a gun by breaking into cars, homes and gun shops. They can swap drugs for guns. It's as easy as can be to get a weapon on the black market,'' Chief Deputy Strength said. ``It happens all the time in Richmond County.''

Mr. Wise, 43, was charged with murder in connection with the shooting rampage that took place at R.E. Phelon Co. on Monday. Police found a gun, similar to a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun, lying next to the North Augusta man in an upstairs office at the plant.

Aiken sheriff's investigators aren't saying how, when or where Mr. Wise got the gun.

``It's still under investigation,'' is the only comment from department spokesman Lt. Michael Frank.

It's difficult to trace from where a gun comes, since there are no state or federal record-keeping systems, said Robin Katcher, Legislative Director for the Coalition To Stop Gun Violence.

``It may be a case where this Mr. Wise owned the gun prior to becoming a convicted felon. There's no records-keeping system, certainly not a federal system, that would indicate that he owned the gun before being convicted,'' Ms. Katcher said.

``Or it may be a case where a gun was originally sold to a guy in Florida and is later given to his brother who moves to Georgia,'' she said. ``Then the gun is given to a convicted felon who lives in Georgia or South Carolina.''

A person with a clean criminal history may also purchase a gun and then sell it or give it to a person who couldn't have gotten the gun through legal means.

This illegal practice is called a straw sale. And it's a big enough problem that the federal government recently adopted a program that attempts to identify and arrest gun suppliers who put guns into the hands of people who aren't supposed to have them.

Under the program, federal firearms officials trace seized weapons to the original seller in hopes of using the information to understand the black market and to disrupt gun trafficking.

Background checks are used by many states to stem gun trafficking - Georgia and South Carolina included.

The check requires an individual who wants to buy a gun tofill out a short form, providing his name, Social Security number, race, sex and date of birth.

The gun dealer then mails, faxes or calls in the information to a law enforcement agency, such as the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) or the Georgia Crime Information Center.

But criminals may slip through background checks. People with common names or those who misidentify themselves or lie about their criminal history can still get guns, admitted Mr. Fishman.

``If there is a question or a doubt on my part, I won't sell them a gun. But that's not to say that it wouldn't or can't happen somewhere else.''

Officials in Virginia limited individuals to purchasing only one gun a month, said Nancy Hwa, spokeswoman for Handgun Control Inc.

The law was adopted four years ago. Since then, gun control advocates say there is a 66 percent reduction in the likelihood that a gun purchased after 1993 and traced back to the Southeast was purchased in Virginia.

The streets are the problem, not gun dealers and pawnshop owners, said an Aiken gun dealer who didn't want to be identified. The dealer had $40,000 in guns stolen from him a few years ago. Many of the guns, he believes, were sold on the black market.

``I've heard tale of it but I have no idea where it is. You'd have to go talk to the crackheads to find out, but you're not going to find out by talking to honest pawnbrokers and gun dealers.''

Richmond County doesn't have such a market but local criminals steal guns here to sell on the black market, Chief Deputy Strength said.

``The guns end up in New York where there's a high premium for guns. They pay large amounts of money for stolen guns and there is definitely a market for them up there, we don't have that same kind of market here,'' Chief Deputy Strength said.

Stolen guns sell for $50 to $500 on the streets, Chief Deputy Strength said. A drug addict may sell a gun for $5 just to get a nickel bag of cocaine, the officer said.