The Problem of Theft from FFLs

Obama’s children are keeping busy.

CT’s largest dealer took a Dodge 3500 through the front doors about 10 years ago. The thieves surprisingly (to me) focused largely on inexpensive pistols.

I think most of the criminals were from the nearest big city, Hartford, which is less than ten miles away. The police were able to arrest everybody involved within months, and (I think) most, but not all of the guns were recovered. I suppose one lesson for the crims would be to avoid pulling jobs in your own backyard.

The FFL has since moved to their own building. The current layout doesn’t appear to be as easy for the smash and grabbers. I’m not close to the owner, but I would like to know if the robbery had any effect on his building design.

I think they grabbed the cheaper guns, because these are already in wide circulation on the streets and so are easier to sell than some custom walnut stocked hunting rifle or target pistol etc.

I’d plant thick oaks in front of my shop and put big concrete flower buckets in between the trees to keep unwanted cars out of my shop.

The gun store of my youth was owned by a crotchety old WWII combat veteran and his son. The old guy, armed and not afraid of a scuffle, lived in the back of the store. I think someone attempted to rob the place late one night, and the attempt was “thwarted” somehow. I was too young to get the full details.

A couple shots from a M-1 Garand would scare the crap out of anyone.

A friend of mine, a retired 82d Abn 1SG/E-8, has a gunshop in a city east of Oklahoma City; it was burgled several years ago… similar hit, truck/chain/burglar bars gone, doors smashed. At least a few dozen weapons stolen, some recovered later, perps not apprehended from what I recall. Now they lock every weapon up in safes all the time, taking out just what they need, and having some display weapons on the wall, have security cameras, and an alarm app as well as the usual alarm company set-up, which is historically a very slow system to get the cops rolling your way. They have always worked armed and have cops drop by all the time, so there have not been any daylight robberies.

The crew that hit the Maryland store in the video seems to have also hit three stores here in VA within about a week of that MD hit, only one was really worth it (they couldnt get in one, and the other has little inventory). They have since been caught, but no word on the guns.

The repeditive nature of this crew’s hits suggests organized crime of some form (gangs are aplenty around here, near DC), so I wouldn’t be surprised if someone picks up where they left off.

They would have to be incredibly stupid or unusually skilled to pull anything off here, but we never discount criminals propensity for what appears to be luck.

I was under the apparently mistaken impression that you were required to secure your weapons when the store wasn’t open. Every gun store I’ve paid attention to has had the policy of securing their stock every night in safes, and putting them on display every morning.

Must be a regional thing, or I’ve just missed the ones who didn’t.

As I understand it, locking everything up every night is SOP for a lot of jewelry stores. All the outfits I know of do 100% inventory every night as they pack everything away in safes or strong boxes. Since firearms are similarly highly portable, ease to resell, and valuable, I cannot see why more FFLs don’t do that.

Obviously safes can be cracked or cut into, but it is way harder and take a little more time than smacking a glass case with a hammer.

“I was under the apparently mistaken impression that you were required to secure your weapons when the store wasn’t open. ”

I suppose that depends how you define “secure”.

They’re in a “secure” building

Do they have to be in a “secure” room in a “secure” building?

Or a “secure” vault in a “secure” room in a “secure” building?

Or a “secure” individual gun safe in a “secure” vault in a “secure” room in a “secure” building.

And so on

Glass cases and peg board are not very secure no matter how you slice it.

There is no such requirement, beyond locking the front door.

Anything beyond that is sheer prudence, and/or insurance agency guidelines.

As more than one experienced FFL informed Baby Brother before he entered the biz, “You’re gonna get tested, and you’re gonna get hit. Make it as difficult as possible for them.”

You are required to store securely as an FFL holder. The definition of “securely” is very loose, and often just means a couple of locked doors. Obviously this is a bad idea, and most FFLs do much, much more. Some IOI’s may have more or less security in mind for an FFL…but black letter law is very fuzzy.

***Must be a regional thing, or I’ve just missed the ones who didn’t.***

It’s a requirement from some insurance carriers, as are specifics of some alarm notification systems.

Some of their demands make good sense if overpriced, others are plain silly window dressing, or outright window dressing.

In some locales the police are under orders to respond slowly to gun store after-hours breakins and respond with sirens howling so that the perps are well aware when it’s time to leave. After all, the important thing is that all the cops go home when their shift is over and live to draw their taxpayer-provided retirement pay.

A Gander Mtn somewhere had a brazen robbery. Guy asked to see a pistol. Smashed counter jockey in the head with it and started running.

We got a circular about it.

Also, in the idiot category, a clerk left an AR-15 unattened which simply disappeared

Then there was John Muhammad’s theft from Bull’s Eye Shooter’s Supply in Tacoma, WA, where he and Lee Malvo basically shoplifted the AR-15 clone they used in the DC Sniper shootings. And, adding insult to injury, the knuckleheads running the place didn’t even know about the gun going missing (supposedly…) until the BATF traced it back after recovering it from Muhammad and Malvo.

Shoplift? WTF? I couldn’t even get the bastards to show me a gun in that store, a few months before this supposedly happened, and a couple of street people manage to walk off with a mid-grade AR-15? I still don’t get that one. My opinion is that there was some kind of collusion between one of the clerks and the thieves, because I still don’t find the story credible that they just walked off with the rifle, somehow. Nothing ever proven, however. I’m still like “Shoplifted it? Say, what…? How…?”. I mean it, too-I was a clean-cut guy in my late thirties at the time, military ID, and the counter guy wouldn’t let me even take a look at a rifle they had behind the counter, because the store was “…too busy…”. And, per the newspaper stories, the one that was stolen was supposedly not behind the counter, but in some kinda bin or bucket out on the store floor, with the surplus Mosin-Nagants and what-not. I’m still not buying that story, to be honest.

I think I remember my friends guns in racks with chains run through ala military arms room secure. With burglar bars, cameras, alarms and bright lights, one would think well enough, but not in today’s criminal nation, nurtured by the previous administration.

I think we are lucky, having our economy trashed by the Caliphate of O (Obama, the DNC and Soros, to mention a few) over the past eight years, along with promoting white hate, and criminal love, that we even have a United States remaining in 2017.

Local democrats are demanding the funding of their pet projects and are pointing fingers at those in power today as we struggle to make the economy work… so why isn’t anyone revealing the truth?

In the stores I have been to, here in the Midwest, as well as in MD where I used to live, all pistols are locked up in a safe each night. I did visit one store in Ohio last year where you stepped through a vault door to the room where they had firearms and ammo; it was a layout that would be hard to crack.

How do you lose a machine gun or destructive device?!? I wonder how many of those losses were manufacturers or large scale dealers. I’d also be interested in seeing how many of them were transferable as compared to post samples.

I can’t imagine a theft from a citizen that would get more federal investigative resources than theft of a machine gun.

I’m not saying boating accidents are right. But I uuunterstand.

Gun stores, and pharmacies are common targets around here. They tend to hit several surrounding towns within a week ,then a few months later make the rounds again. Rather than the truck and chain method, they often knock a hole in a back wall of the store. The videos always show two or more, and if caught they are generally from Memphis. Some obvious organization going on there, sometimes as many as half a dozen places hit in a night, then again in another town the next night.

A guy named Derrick Mosley tried a solo daylight robbery of Discount Gun Sales in Beaverton, OR about four years ago, armed only with baseball bat, to a complete lack of success. (Armed staff.)

What interested me at the time was that Cracked.com did a post on how D-U-M-B dumb this guy was, and illustrated it with the stock photo of a guy with bat and orange t-shirt below.

Below that is a picture of the actual guy, and the glass case he shattered when he brought a bat to a gun fight.

I think Cracked might have felt obliged to adopt a different tone on the D-U-M-B dumb question if they’d used that photo.

I think the classic in this genre was performed by one David Zaback, at H & J Firearms in Renton, WA, back in February of 1990. Zaback walked into the store around 4:00pm on a Saturday evening, when the store was full of customers, and had to walk around a marked patrol car to get to the door. He pulled a pistol, fired it in an apparent attempt at robbing the store, and was shot multiple times in the chest by the clerk. The on-duty officer fired at him, as well, but apparently attained no hits. Other customers also drew their weapons, but did not fire inasmuch as doing so would have been superfluous.

Interestingly, the clerk was shooting a 10mm of some sort, I believe a Glock 20. Zaback made it to the hospital, but died there with four 10mm bullets in his chest. I’m unsure what load he was shot with, but I’d actually been in that store and talked to the clerk there about 10mm, and I vaguely remember him extolling the virtues of a fairly heavy and slow load at around 185 grains. I’m actually not sure if it was the same guy who did the shooting, but the gentleman I spoke with seemed like he was fairly switched-on, so I suspect it might have been him.

That incident illustrates the frequently uncounted consequences of crime. The owner, by all accounts a nice guy, was a combat vet who had seen some things, but was coping. The shooting tilted him over the edge, and he disappeared into the life of the homeless alcoholic. Several years later, his family had no idea where he was. Just a tragedy all around.

You’re talking the owner of H & J Firearms? I hadn’t heard about that, at all…

Was he even there, that day? I thought the guy who did the shooting was an employee, and manning the store by himself-Or, that was the story I heard, second- or third-hand.

The place I’m thinking of was on the SW corner of Sunset Way and Union, on the Highlands, in a little strip mall. I don’t remember the name (of store or owner). The details match – owner and deputy present, robber fires round into ceiling to announce the holdup (or suicide by cop, possibly), and owner and deputy return fire.

It’s possible that:

A)my details (or memory) are wrong

B)there were two similar robberies in Renton.

I’d been there several times, enough to peg the owner as a good guy, and read about the robbery in the paper. When the store never reopened, I asked around and heard what I related.

I knew they went out of business not long after, but I didn’t know why.

Sad that he suffered that, and for what? I’m sort of suspicious that Zaback was trying for “suicide by cop”, but I don’t know that anyone has established what the hell he was thinking, for sure. No suicide note, no mention of anyone he was close to thinking he was, or saying anything of the sort.

And, supposedly, he was a law-abiding citizen prior to the robbery attempt, but did have mental issues. The family said they didn’t know where he got the gun, which is described as a “.38 caliber automatic”, so I have to wonder if he was using a Smith & Wesson Model 52, or something they described improperly in the media. If it was a Model 52, that’s kinda evidence for mental illness, right there…

Here’s the newspaper report of the inquest,. Briefly, Zaback, who had (probably) a .380, and got off at least one shot, was shot seven time, four 10mms from a store clerk named Danny Morris, three 9mms from a local uniformed policeman.

It was the 10mm that actually killed him.

Several other people apparently pulled, but didn’t fire. The internet email versions sometimes say he was hit 23 times, but this is the official version.

Inquest: Officer Didn’t Fire Fatal Shot — Jury Rules In Slaying Of Gunman In Renton

By Christy Scattarella

RENTON – An inquest jury deliberated only 35 minutes yesterday before finding that a King County police officer had reason to believe he was in danger when he shot a Renton man during a holdup in February.

The Renton District Court jury also ruled 5-1 that Officer Timothy Lally did not fire the shot that killed David Zaback, 33. Both Lally and a store clerk fired at Zaback.

“It’s unfortunate that it (the shooting) happened, but I can’t complain about the outcome,” said Lally, 49, a patrol officer in the Maple Valley precinct and an 18-year veteran of the force.

Zaback’s family did not attend the inquest. The dead man’s brother, Dan Zaback of Bellevue, said in a telephone interview, “We accept the decision.”

He added that his brother had been under a psychiatrist’s care.

On the afternoon of Feb. 3, Zaback, brandishing a .38-caliber semiautomatic pistol, entered H & J Leather & Firearms Ltd. in Renton, according to police.

“He took a shooting stance and said, `The gun is loaded. I have a round in the chamber, and I will shoot,’ ” testified store owner Wendall Woodall, who was standing just inside the front door. “He said it twice.”

Zaback then ordered those inside – including Lally, who was in uniform and had stopped by to have coffee with Woodall before going on duty, – to place their hands on the gun counter, Woodall said.

Danny Morris, a clerk at the store, said he stepped behind a file cabinet, pulled out his 10mm semiautomatic pistol and remained out of sight while Zaback held his gun on the customers.

Lally said he moved behind another file cabinet, raised his 9mm semiautomatic pistol and ordered Zaback to drop the gun.

Exactly what happened next is uncertain.

Morris said he fired first after Zaback turned his gun toward Lally. “I was sure he was going to shoot Officer Lally, and I fired three times,” Morris testified.

Lally said it was Zaback who fired first. “He turned toward me and fired a shot. I fired back at him,” Lally said. The officer’s gun then misfired and he crouched while trying to fix it.

Zaback, who had fired three times, was shot three times in the chest and once in the arm. He died a few hours later at Harborview Medical Center. A bullet in Zaback’s spine most likely was the one that killed him, said King County Medical Examiner Donald Reay. That bullet came from Morris’ gun, said Frank Lee, a Washington State Crime Laboratory ballistics expert.

Inquest juries do not determine guilt or innocence, but the King County prosecutor will consider the jury’s decision in deciding whether to file charges against Lally or Morris, said Deputy Prosecutor

Kyle Aiken.

— Times staff reporter Anita Cal contributed to this report.

James F.: I believe you are flaunting your non-idiot privilege. Shame! Shame! Shame!

As the cousin of a [deceased] would’ve been particle physicist, neurosurgeon, test pilot and rap artiste once famously said: “You have to look at it from every child’s point of view that was raised in the hood. You have to understand… how he gonna get his money to have clothes to go to school?”

– Nautika “my parents tried, and failed, to name me after a line of shitty ‘lifestyle’ clothing” Harris

Looks like Cracked put up a photo of a Red Lectroid by accident. Common mistake; can’t blame ’em really.

*** – Nautika “my parents tried, and failed, to name me after a line of shitty ‘lifestyle’ clothing” Harris***

My alltime favorite remains the son of the King family, with more creative originality than would allow naming their new baby boy after Martin Luther King. Instead, he got the first name *Nosmo*, derived from a sign in the hospital emergency waiting room:

NoSmo king.

Could have been called “Nopar”.

Mo Debenly