By Marc Caputo
The Miami Herald
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Citing a recent shooting rampage against Miami-Dade police, two South Florida Democratic lawmakers announced legislation Wednesday to increase penalties against criminals who use guns or obtain them with false identities.
Sen. Gwen Margolis and Rep. Evan Jenne said the increased penalties, which call for mandatory sentences ranging from 25 years to life in prison, should help deter a rash of so-called ''assault weapons’’ shootings, such as the one that led to the death of Miami-Dade Officer Jose Somohano in September.
But the legislation doesn’t address a key problem highlighted by Somohano’s killing: A loophole in state law that makes it relatively easy for an identity thief to buy a gun. During a gun purchase, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement doesn’t check to see if a driver’s license used by a buyer has been flagged as stolen.
So months before Somohano and four other officers were shot, accused killer Shawn Labeet was able to use a stolen identity to buy numerous firearms -- including the murder weapon — with the the unwitting approval of the FDLE, which found no problem with the driver’s license Labeet used. Three years before the killing, a man named Kevin Wehner notified the state’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles that someone had stolen his identity, according to an investigation by Miami Herald news partner CBS4.
In the hours after the shooting, police originally sought Wehner and not Labeet, potentially endangering Wehner because his photo was released to the news media and hampering detectives seeking the killer.
The word about Wehner’s I.D. theft never made it to FDLE. And even if it did, it appears it wouldn’t have made a difference. FDLE spokeswoman Kristin Perezluha said the agency ''is not authorized’’ to check the driver-license database to see if a buyer might be using a stolen identity.
When asked about why the bill didn’t include mandates for more identity-theft investigations, Margolis, of Sunny Isles Beach, said: “I can’t tell law enforcement when to get involved.’'
Jenne, of Dania Beach, added: “It’s concentrating strictly on semi-automatic weapons, not those other issues.’'
National Rifle Association lobbyist Marion Hammer called the bill ''election-year nonsense’’ and said she will work overtime to kill it in the Republican-led Legislature. She said the bill is so poorly written it’s a back-door way of controlling lawful gun ownership while repeating existing federal law concerning gun crimes.
The proposal would require prison sentences of life if a criminal harms someone while committing a crime with a semi-automatic or automatic weapon; 25 years if the criminal commits a crime with such a weapon; 15 years if the criminal obtains one of the weapons by using a stolen or fake I.D.
Also facing a 15-year sentence: the gun seller, even if he didn’t know the buyer duped him by using a fake identification. Staffers said they’ll try to soften that language to avoid charging lawful gun sellers, but Margolis said the penalty wasn’t too harsh for sellers.
''I don’t think that they’re really duped. They know the kind of evidence that they would need. What’s happening is the gun sellers are not necessarily enforcing the laws that are in this state, and we’ve never made them responsible for the enforcement,’' she said. “This would help law enforcement by making them responsible.’'
But Monroe County sheriff’s Sgt. Thomas Kiffney said Margolis’ legislation misses the mark.
Kiffney owns one of the gun shops where Labeet purchased a number of guns. Kiffney said he followed the law by watching Labeet fill out a Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives gun-buying form, checking his driver’s license and then calling the FDLE with the license information to make sure everything was fine. The FDLE green-lighted the sale. The murder weapon was purchased at another shop, D&P Pawn in Tamarac, where a man who answered the telephone refused comment.
Later, when Labeet wanted to buy body armor, Kiffney became so suspicious that he alerted ATF.
''I did more than I was supposed to,’' Kiffney said. “The ball was dropped by so many agencies so many times. ... It would help if the lawmakers tried to fix some of the problems, rather than just propose a knee-jerk fix like this.’'
Copyright 2008 The Miami Herald