The gun used in the slaying of two New York City police officers was purchased at a metro Atlanta pawn shop in 1996 and sold again in 1998.
But that’s where the trail ends, said Assistant Special Agent in Charge Aladino Ortiz of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Atlanta. The nation’s patchwork of gun laws makes it tough to solve the mystery of how convicted felon Ismaaiyl Brinsley obtained the silver-colored Taurus 9mm.
“We may never know how Mr. Brinsley got it into his hands,” Ortiz said Tuesday.
Brinsley went on a rampage Saturday, shooting his ex-girlfriend in Baltimore, then continuing on to New York, where he gunned down Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu as they sat in their patrol car before killing himself. He reportedly made threats against law enforcement on social media before the attacks.
As a convicted felon, Brinsley was barred from possessing a firearm. But the law hasn’t stopped him from getting his hands on them in the past. While living in the Atlanta area, he pleaded guilty to felony shoplifting charges in 2008, but was arrested in Cobb County in 2011 for shooting up a car with a stolen gun.
Brinsley served three months in boot camp for the 2011 incident, and violated the terms of his five-year probation twice. The first time, he was sentenced to 30 days in jail. A warrant for the second violation remained open at the time of Saturday’s attack.
The man who first purchased the gun used in the police killings bought the firearm legally in 1996 from a pawn shop that was licensed by the federal government, Ortiz said. While that owner recalls that he sold it two years later, he told federal agents that he’s having trouble remembering who purchased it. Agents think the buyer might have been a co-worker.
Ortiz declined to release the names of the pawn shop and purchaser, citing the ongoing investigation.
Investigators are typically able to link guns to their first owner. Sales by manufacturers, wholesalers and the initial retailer can be easy to uncover, Ortiz said.
But this chain often breaks when a gun is re-sold.
Gun registries are banned by federal law. Federally-licensed stores must keep their purchase records for as long as they are in business, but they don’t report the sales to the government. Unless investigators know the name of the licensed re-seller, they’re typically out of luck.
The paper trail for sales between private parties can be even harder to follow. There’s no federal record-keeping requirement for those that take place within a state.
Some states do regulate these private sales, but laws vary, said Michael McLively, an attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
In California, even private purchases must be processed through a licensed firearms dealer. These transactions are recorded in a statewide database, accessible to certain law enforcement authorities.
“If a crime gun is recovered, it can be easier to track in California as opposed to other states,” McLively said.
Georgia does not track private transactions. State law also expressly forbids county and municipal governments from passing laws that regulate gun shows, sales or ownership, among other things.
Stolen guns can be difficult to trace as well. There is no federal requirement for owners to report when their firearms go missing.
Law enforcement agencies often report the ones they know about to a national criminal database, but certain owners don’t record serial numbers for their firearms. Without this identifier, a search can kick up millions of matches.
“It’s the proverbial needle in a haystack,” Ortiz said.
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