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Print - ATF: Store that sold guns to Newtown mom, Nancy Lanza, had violations | wtsp.com
ATF: Store that sold guns to Newtown mom, Nancy Lanza, had violations 12:03 PM, Apr 11, 2013

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The ATF found more than 500 violations of federal firearms laws and regulations at the Connecticut gun store that sold two guns found at the Newtown massacre scene, some dating to 2007, but didn't yank the store owner's federal firearms license until after the massacre. Among the "willful violations" found from January 2010 to July 2011 at Riverview Gun Sales in East Windsor, Conn.: A senior store employee "sold ammunition on at least two occasions" to a man "he had reason to believe was a felon." It's the same employee who sold the Bushmaster XM15 rifle to Nancy Lanza on March 29, 2010, that her son, Adam Lanza, used at Sandy Hook Elementary School to kill 26 people on Dec. 14, ATF records show. Records of the violations obtained by The Journal News give no indication any of the violations involved sales to Nancy Lanza or the Newtown massacre. STORY: Lawyer: Gun license revocation, Newtown unrelated The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which regulates gun shops, outlined the violations at Riverview Gun Sales in a final revocation notice issued Dec. 20 to the store's owner David LaGuercia. ATF agents raided the shop days after the massacre. Among the violations found during ATF inspections in 2007 and 2009 was that the store failed to "correctly and completely record" all of the required information on ATF 4473 forms, which are firearms transaction forms. The letter also says the store failed to "properly maintain acquisition and disposition records as required, by entering incorrect serial numbers into the records," and failed to submit reports of some handgun sales to the ATF. The Journal News obtained copies of ATF 4473s, the firearms transaction forms that Nancy Lanza filled out and signed, showing she bought the Bushmaster XM15 rifle from the employee on March 29, 2010, and a SIG Sauer 9mm pistol on March 16, 2011 at the same store. It's unclear whether ATF investigators came across the record of her purchasing the Bushmaster when they reviewed at least one out of every four ATF 4473s for a 16-month period from August 13, 2009, to Jan. 5, 2011. Nothing on that record would have been cause for alarm. In the revocation notice, the ATF said LaGuercia knew how to do things properly and received "11 separate instances of instruction from ATF regarding how to comply with federal firearms laws and regulations" between September 2004 and January 2010.

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Nov 10, 2013 05:46:58PM MST

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"Although the licensee committed over 500 violations, and thus clearly did many things incorrectly, the licensee also successfully completed hundreds of transactions where all the requirements were completed correctly," the letter says. "This conclusively demonstrates that the licensee knew how to do things the right way, and was capable of getting things right when appropriate attention and effort were devoted to the job, but simply did not focus sufficient attention to ensure that he complied with the GCA (Gun Control Act) each time he sold a firearm." LaGuercia's lawyer Robert Altchiler, who began representing LaGuercia in late January, suggested that revocation wasn't being considered prior to the Newtown massacre and an incident involving Jordan Marsh, a Connecticut man accused of stealing a rifle from the store counter on Dec. 11, three days before the massacre. "I think that it was a panicked public relations response to things that happened in December between Newtown and Jordan Marsh,' Altchiler told The Journal News. "I do not think for a second that they thought my client posed a danger to the community that would warrant an emergency revocation like that." "I believe that had they allowed the dust to settle rather than rushing to the revocation, that Riverview would have been able to resume negotiations and conversations with the ATF and come to a settlement more consistent with the conversations that were taking place in August 2012 during the revocation hearing, rather than rush into this extreme and draconian result that up until December 2012 apparently never ever had been contemplated or considered by the ATF."

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Nov 10, 2013 05:46:58PM MST