Utah's gun dealers, who long operated relatively free from regulation and out of the limelight, are coming under fire from opponents who would like to put their industry 6 feet underground.
But the dealers are firing back."It's almost become that if you're a gun dealer, you're a second-class citizen," said Terry Lee Larsen, who sells guns at his sporting goods store in Sterling, Sanpete County. "I wasn't opposed when half my neighbors held a federal firearm license."
A database compiled and analyzed by the Deseret News provides an in-depth look at Utah's 837 federally licensed firearms dealers. Among the findings:
Pawn shops make up fewer than one in seven Utah gun dealers, yet they account for nearly half the state's recorded firearms transactions.
More than two dozen certified law-enforcement officers who hold licenses to sell guns requested background checks on 485 would-be gun buyers in the first half of 1999.
Many dealers who sell from home or their unrelated businesses still hold licenses despite recent efforts by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to push them out of business.
After compiling data from the federal firearms bureau on each dealer in Utah, the Deseret News obtained background-check request records from the state Bureau of Criminal Identification through an open-records request. The state records reveal how many legally required background checks the dealers requested between Jan. 1 and June 10.
The state records provide perhaps the most comprehensive picture available of the volume of firearms business done by Utah dealers. Each of the 28,450 requests during the time period studied represents the potential sale of at least one handgun, rifle or shotgun. About 3 percent of the requests during the period were denied.
Under pressure from the administration of President Clinton, the number of Utah gun dealers dropped significantly this decade. Although federal authorities do not keep historical records, Utah reportedly had more than 2,000 dealers at the beginning of the 1990s; this year, there were 837.
But Utah gun dealers remain an active and powerful political force. Many of the gun dealers interviewed said they make regular contributions to national and local lobbying organizations. Anecdotal data suggest that gun dealers, whose livelihood rests on the firearms industry and regulation surrounding it, make up a significant part of Utah's powerful gun lobby.
Recent deadly shootings in Salt Lake City and elsewhere have focused attention on just about every aspect of the nation's firearms industry, including dealers. Many dealers argued against a special Utah legislative session on guns earlier this year, saying further gun laws wouldn't help individuals who misuse firearms to become more responsible.
Most of Utah's guns are sold by a handful of high-volume dealers, including pawn shops and sporting goods stores. But more than half of Utah's federally licensed firearms dealers operate from places such as their law offices, landscape companies, grocery stores or homes.
Nearly 50 percent of all dealers didn't sell a single gun in the first half of 1999, and three-quarters of them sold so few in that time that critics charge them with holding a firearms license just to get wholesale prices on guns for themselves and their friends.
Then there are the state agencies, state colleges, federal military bases, police departments and individual police officers that are licensed gun dealers. Among the locations guns can be purchased legally in Utah are motion picture companies, machine shops, auto-parts stores, gas stations, food-processing plants and a one-time bar.
In addition to the local government entities that hold firearms licenses, two of Utah's gun dealers are arms of the state and federal governments. The Hill Rod and Gun Club at Hill Air Force Base made 12 background-check requests from January to June, while the Utah State Agency for Surplus Property made 10 requests, all of them for handgun sales.
"We receive firearms that have been confiscated," said Ryan Westergard, assistant manager at the surplus property agency's warehouse in Draper. "We also receive firearms that have been surplused by the state.
"Of those, we are able to sell long guns only to other FFLs (federal firearms licensees)," he said. "We sell weapons of retiring law-enforcement officers back to the officers themselves. We don't do any directly to the public."
Obtaining a federal firearms license as a dealer or pawnbroker requires a one-page application, background check and $200 fee. Although the application asks would-be dealers to list their intended location and hours of business, federal inspectors simply do not have the manpower to verify the information submitted on every application.
Utah gun dealers overwhelmingly argue that the Second Amendment protects not just their right to possess firearms, but also to sell them. Most said they don't fret about weapons they sell being used to harm someone else.
"There's always that chance out there," said Sevier County resident Leo A. Hovinga, who works as a law enforcement officer for the state Division of Wildlife Resources and sells guns when he's off duty.
"But if people are worried about the guns they sell, car dealers should really be worried about the cars they sell."
Dealers large and small
Utah's biggest gun dealer might have the most heavily concentrated private firearms cache in the state. Inventory at Orem's Van Wagenen's Finance, which has reinforced steel walls and bars on the windows and doors, includes thousands of handguns, shotguns and assault rifles.
Owner Norm Van Wagenen likes to accept used firearms as trade-ins because he can then sell them at a greater markup than what he might get on a new firearm. New guns are usually marked up about 17 percent by dealers, but Van Wagenen might re-sell a used firearm at a markup of 25 percent or greater.
"You couldn't survive on just new guns," said Van Wagenen. "You have to do used."
The profits on pawned guns are even greater than used firearms. About 90 percent of pawned firearms at the store are redeemed by their owners at an interest rate of 10 percent per month, while the other 10 percent of pawned guns are sold at substantial profit.
The majority of Utah firearms dealers can identify more closely with James E. Green of Cedar City than they can with Van Wagenen. Green is an Iron County deputy sheriff who holds a license to deal firearms. He made two background-check requests in the first half of this year.
"I have a business, and I am in it to make money," said Green, who sells from a shop in his back yard. "I purchase a lot of things for the sheriff's office because I hold a firearms license. This is something I hope I can do when I retire."
Most active dealers fall somewhere in between Green and Van Wagenen in terms of volume. Among dealers who were active, the average number of background-check requests in the time period studied was 64. But that number was skewed by high-volume dealers because the median among active dealers was 12.
But among all dealers, the average was much lower. Forty-seven percent of Utah gun dealers made no back-ground-check requests in the first half of this year.
Basement bandits
Among four categories of dealers, those who made by far the fewest background-check requests operated out of their homes. Perhaps the most embattled gun dealers in Utah, they are derisively called "kitchen-table dealers" or "basement bandits" by critics both in and out of the industry.
In Utah, such dealers represent a quarter of the total but conduct only 1 percent of the transactions, according to the Deseret News analysis. The Clinton administration made it a point to target home-based gun dealers, who critics say are at best just dealing to friends and at worst prone to sloppily recorded or even illegal sales.
"If they're not using the (federal firearms license), we take them out of business," said Chad Yoder, one of just two federal ATF inspectors for the entire state. "We only give FFLs to people who are going to be selling guns."
Among the powerful forces trying to drive home-based dealers out of business are not just federal regulators, but also anti-gun lobbying groups and even other gun dealers. The executive director of a national gun-control think tank told the Deseret News no home-based dealer should hold a license.
"They impede ATF's ability to inspect legitimate gun dealers, putting us all at risk," said Josh Sugarman, of the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C. "Today, if you're not operating a storefront, you should not hold the federal firearms license, whether you're a policeman, doctor, lawyer or mass murderer."
The home-based dealers also draw the ire of large gun dealers, who say the home-based dealers not only have problems keeping records but also sometimes fail to collect sales taxes.
That gives them an unfair competitive advantage, said dealer Jeff Spencer, who sells guns and bicycles at his store in Ogden. Spencer, owner of Kent's Shooters Supply, blames federal agents for rubber-stamping firearms licenses.
"We wouldn't have the proliferation of licenses if the ATF would go out and inspect these places beforehand," Spencer said. "Basement bandits are not legitimate."
But Elwood Powell, an Ogden attorney who holds a federal firearms license and who sells only a handful of guns each year, said the volume of sales shouldn't matter. Many low-volume dealers are gunsmiths or hobbyists who must possess the license to buy parts, he said.
"Whether they do just one or two transactions a year doesn't mean they're not a legitimate (license) holder," said Powell, chairman of the Utah Shooting Sports Council.
"I haven't seen any documentation that shows small dealers keep worse records than the large dealers," Powell said. "Frankly, I think the opposite is true."
In Utah, 37 percent of gun dealers submitted an unrelated business address on their federal firearms application. Federal regulations do not prohibit guns being dealt from just about anywhere, as long as the applicant has a clean record.
Utah's small-volume dealers say they are, in many cases, safer than large-volume dealers because they don't sell to strangers.
"If I do not know the person or if they're not a certified peace officer, I won't sell a weapon to them," said Kenneth W. Holford, a retired deputy sheriff and firearms dealer from Iron County.
Police and gun dealing
One of Utah's top 10 gun dealers is a former St. George police officer who quit in 1995 because of low pay and opened a pawn shop. Gordon Wright's State Wide Pawn Shop is on pace to conduct nearly 1,000 background-check requests this year.
Wright said he found it interesting that some police departments prohibit officers from driving tow trucks or running collection agencies in their spare time because of potential conflicts of interest, but they don't prohibit officers from selling guns.
But Wright and most other Utah police officers who deal firearms said they don't see a problem with it. In fact, several officers said they are most qualified to decide who should be allowed to purchase firearms.
"I don't see what the conflict would be," Wright said. "Most officers are just selling to family and friends."
Other than Wright, the Utah law-enforcement officer who made the most background-check requests in the first half of 1999 was Hovinga, who had 15. Most officers with firearms licenses had done fewer than five.
To determine how many police officers were dealing firearms, the Deseret News obtained a list of certified peace officers from the Utah Department of Public Safety. Those records were matched with the state background-check request records. At least 30 certified officers hold federal firearms licenses, although some of them -- like Wright -- are not currently employed by police departments.
"The only way I could see it become a conflict of interest is if an agency is buying all of its weapons from one of its officers who holds an FFL," said Salt Lake County deputy sheriff Laddie Houck, who has held the license for 20 years.
Other Utah police officers agreed with Houck, but several said they do sell firearms to their own departments for police use. Almost all officers who deal guns said they sell to other officers for personal use.
One Utah gun dealer who is a former military police officer doesn't think police should be selling guns at all -- even if it is primarily to other police officers.
"I think it would be a conflict of interest," said J. Clifton Snow of American Fork. "Even when (the officer) is off-duty, he's still on call 24 hours a day."
But stories like the one told by Green support some officers' arguments that police are the best of all gun dealers. Earlier this year, a man entered Green's backyard gun shop to purchase a firearm. But Green, who works as a court bailiff, had seen the man before a judge and knew he had been convicted of domestic violence, disqualifying him from gun purchases. The man did not know Green was a police officer, and he lied on his application form.
"I said, 'Hey, I know you have a criminal record. I'm not going to sell to you,' " Green said. "He walked out the door, and I haven't seen him since.
"If he had gone down the street to one of my competitors, he would have had the gun illegally."
In Utah, many police departments sell surplus weapons to holders of the federal firearms license, who in turn sell them to the public. Two law-enforcement agencies -- the Washington County Sheriff's Office and the St. George Police Department -- hold federal firearms licenses themselves, although they made no background-check requests in the first part of 1999.
"If something's declared surplus, we might sell it to a pawn shop or another dealer," said Washington County Sheriff Kirk Smith. "Some departments destroy weapons, but if you get a nice deer rifle, I wouldn't like to put it in a metal squasher."
Wright said St. George police recently declined his pawn shop's offer to buy surplus weapons, which he predicted would have a large market.
"I think they're worried about how it would look for the police department to be selling guns," he said. "They're supposed to be getting them off the streets."
Gun laws
State law forbids counties and cities from passing ordinances or regulations dealing with firearms. But gun dealers operating businesses are subject to the same local zoning laws and business-license requirements as anyone else operating a business.
By checking city records, the Deseret News found that eight of 99 federally licensed firearms dealers in Utah County did not hold business licenses. Of the eight, Utah Valley State College and several others said they do not sell firearms and hold firearms licenses just to buy parts for gunsmithing.
Only one of the eight dealers without a business license, Guns Unlimited in Orem, had made any background-check requests in the state records reviewed. That store attempted to sell one gun in the first half of this year.
Spencer of Kent's Shooters Supply said he would not be surprised to learn that many small dealers are unaware of or simply ignore local regulations that might apply to their businesses.
"They're not collecting sales tax on a majority of those sales, and the cities are losing the revenue," he said.
The influence of Utah's gun dealers, most of whom argue that further gun laws won't do any good, is felt on Capitol Hill. Dealers, who are under increasing scrutiny after shootings in Utah, Colorado, California and elsewhere, aren't shy about making their case before legislators.
"I'm sure they're all pursuing it," said Powell of the Shooting Sports Council.
As traditionally gun-friendly Utah slowly becomes more urban, the unfriendly fire between dealers and their opponents will increase. The dealers wonder why the focus is on them when they aren't the ones recklessly pulling the trigger.
"You can write all the laws you want, and it's not going to stop (shootings)," said Peter T. Weimer, the former police chief of Monroe who sells guns when he's not enforcing the law at Fremont Indian State Park.
"Let's face it: People who want to get a gun are going to get it."