After a sting, a gun dealer gets stung

Fifteen years ago, when Raymond Tanner graduated high school, his dad switched careers.

Radically.

He sold his share of a dairy farm stand and opened a gun shop. The Bucks County family had always loved hunting, Tanner says, so selling rifles, revolvers and cartridges was a logical move.

But going from butter to guns has its downside.

You have to worry about doing business with the wrong customers. And a Washington lobbying group could post your name on its Web site, naming you as an arms dealer who caters to criminals.

Which is what happened last month when the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence released a report, "Shady Dealings: Illegal Gun Trafficking from Licensed Gun Dealers." Tanner's store was featured as one of the scurrilous.

What the Brady Center didn't know is that the sale had been a sting, arranged in cooperation with the local office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Lanky and laid-back, a yellow polo shirt tucked loosely into his jeans, Ray Tanner, 33, now manages Tanner's Sport Center in Jamison, Bucks County, for his father. The family prides itself on running an honest operation, he said.

Along the back wall, hundreds of rifles stand at attention, mahogany stocks gleaming, barrels pointed skyward. In one corner, a massive elk with prodigious antlers appears to be caught, mid-charge, coming through the wall.

In this small suburban shop, which stocks fishing reels and insect repellent, baseball caps and flashlights, as well as 1,500 firearms - about half of them handguns - spotting bad guys is relatively easy.

About once a month, the sales staff turns away a suspicious customer. Usually, Tanner says, a couple will come in. The man will look at handguns. He'll know just what he's looking for.

While he considers the fine points, the woman will wander around, utterly uninterested. But when they're ready to buy, she'll be the one filling out the paperwork. If it can be proved she bought the guns for the man, it is a "straw purchase" - a felony.

Gun shops that willfully sell to straw purchasers can also lose their license and face prosecution, says John Hageman, special agent for the Philadelphia office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

So gun dealers are in a tricky spot, Hageman says. "They are businessmen dealing in a commodity. If they profile people, they risk alienating legitimate customers. But if they aren't suspicious enough and allow criminals to buy guns, they risk not only their credibility and their license, but people's lives.

"It is not an exact science," Hageman says.

Two years ago this month, a local ATF agent dropped by Tanner's with a photograph of Michael Daniels, 31, of Philadelphia, a convicted felon suspected of patronizing gun shops in the area.

A few weeks later, on Feb. 21, Daniels showed up. "We recognized him right away," Tanner says. He strolled in with another felon, Lawrence Whitehead, and a crack addict, Angela Miles, 32, both Philadelphia residents. She hung out, Tanner says, while the men shopped for a Glock and two other pistols.

Without a word, one of the sales staff slipped into the back and called the ATF.

"They said they couldn't send someone over right away and asked us to stall," Tanner recalls. "We were told they were felons, but we didn't know what these guys had done."

According to court documents, Whitehead, 28, had escaped from a halfway house after spending seven years in prison for robbery. Daniels had multiple robbery and drug convictions. Neither could pass the background checks required for a gun purchase.

So when it was time to pay, they summoned Miles to the cash register.

Whitehead and Daniels agreed to give her $25 of crack and $65 cash if she put her name on the forms, court records said. Before leaving Philadelphia, she'd smoked the down payment.

When Miles finished the paperwork, the salesman told her that the computer system was down, so they couldn't do the background check until the next day.

Later, Tanner learned that the three drove to another gun shop to see if the computers were really down.

They were.

The next day, Daniels, Whitehead and Miles returned to complete the purchase. When they left the shop, the ATF was waiting to greet them.

Miles cooperated with the federal agents, according to court records, and was found to have bought an additional nine handguns in 2001, three of which were recovered by the Philadelphia police in connection with crimes.

The mother of seven (according to court documents, she is not involved in their care), Miles was initially given four years' probation, but she violated the terms, so she was sentenced to five months in custody.

Whitehead was sent to prison for 46 months. Daniels was sentenced to 60 months.

And Tanner's Sport Center?

A black eye for good behavior.

Oops.

A local newspaper ran the news from the Brady report on the front page.

"The phones started ringing off the hook," Tanner says. Some customers were outraged and threatened never to do business with the place again. Others called to say they couldn't believe it was true.

Tim Moran, who was working the counter the day of the sting, looked up the Brady Center on the Internet and called to complain. Dennis Henigan, legal director for the group, called him to apologize. Tanner's was removed from the report, and a correction was posted on the Brady Center's Web site.

"It's the first time that this has happened," Henigan said this week.