Lethal Passage_ The Story of a Gun - Erik Larson [74]
The database provided immediate revelations. For one thing, it put the lie to the NRA claim that assault weapons were not often used in crime. The study revealed a startling increase in the use of assault guns from 1986 to 1989 and found that for traces made between January 1, 1988, and March 27, 1989, assault weapons accounted for 8.1 percent of homicide traces and 30 percent of traces stemming from organized crime investigations (including arrests involving drug cartels, arms traffickers, and terrorist groups). The fourth most commonly traced assault weapon was the S.W. Daniel Cobray.
ATF wasn’t able to provide such information on its own until late in 1989, when its own automated trace system began operating; as of June 1992 the agency was still struggling to rid the system of kinks.
No matter how efficient ATF’s database becomes, however, it will offer only limited help in understanding the use and migration of weapons nationwide. The bureau traces only about 10 percent of guns used in crime. In fiscal 1990 and 1991 the Los Angeles police department and Los Angeles County sheriff asked ATF to conduct only 117 traces, even though in 1991 alone the city had 2,062 homicides. In most investigations involving a crime committed with a gun, police simply do not request a trace. “If they’ve got an armed robber and they’ve also got the gun, they don’t care about the gun,” La Forest said. “When they go to court, they say, ‘This is the gun the guy had.’ The question we want to ask is, ‘Where’d he get the gun?’ ”
When police or even ATF’s own agents do request gun traces, they often fail to provide the Landover tracing center with precise information. Inaccurate descriptions of seized weapons are common. The problem is especially acute for the Cobray and its look-alike ancestors, the MAC, RPB, and Ingram; it’s not uncommon for a police department to list a seized Cobray as a MAC-10 or even an Uzi. Moreover, the agency requesting the trace often fails to provide accurate information about the crime in which the gun was used. Detroit’s La Forest, for example, believes that easily half the Detroit guns identified as having been confiscated for “weapons violations” were actually seized during narcotics arrests. The weapons charges, he said, are merely the quickest and easiest to record in the bureaucratic process of logging evidence that immediately follows an arrest.
Taken together, the lack of comprehensive data about crime guns, ATF’s ticklish political position, and explicit restrictions on the bureau’s inspections and investigations, all help maintain the unimpeded diversion of guns from legitimate channels to the bad guys. Each in its own way nudged Nicholas Elliot’s Cobray along its deadly path.
Raymond Rowley, an agent in ATF’s Norfolk office, initiated the bureau’s search for the source of Nicholas’s gun. He heard about the shooting on the news and quickly volunteered his help to Det. Donald Adams, the Virginia Beach homicide detective in charge of the case. Rowley ordered an “Urgent” trace, the highest of three request levels and one that typically yields a response within a matter of hours. The ATF’s Urgent trace of the revolver used by John Hinckley to shoot Ronald Reagan took all of sixteen minutes.
The serial number from Nicholas’s Cobray was relayed to the special agent in charge in Atlanta, Tom Stokes, who then telephoned S.W. Daniel. No one answered. It was Friday; the company operated only Monday through Thursday. But Stokes eventually managed to speak by phone with Sylvia Daniel, who, in a departure from the usual