By Ryan Maye Handy
The Gazette
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The man pulls on latex gloves and reaches under the driver’s seat of his car in the parking lot of a local mall on a mid-August afternoon. He pulls out a bag and unzips it. Inside are four handguns he got that morning.
He pulls a .38-caliber out of the bag: “This is good if you are going to a club with other gang members and you are afraid of a pat- down.”
Next, he shows off a Spencer revolver: “If you want a little more to get the job done.”
Cruz, not his real name, is probably in his 20s and says he has been in a gang since he was 11. He also has a felony record — according to federal law, Cruz can’t own a gun, but that doesn’t make it any harder to get one, he says.
To legally buy a handgun in Colorado, you must be 21 and pass a background check. Colorado state and federal laws prohibit felons and people with domestic violence misdemeanors from owning weapons.
Cruz will never pass a background check, and neither will most of his friends. It is easier for them to get guns than for citizens without a record to get them. Cruz gets stolen or illegal guns through an underground network, no background or ID checks required.
“You make 10 different calls and you can get (guns) from 10 different places,” Cruz said.
Felons with firearms are not rare occurrences. This week in Denver, agents for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives arrested four people for being felons in possession of firearms.
In Colorado Springs, Corey Handy, whose misdemeanor domestic violence convictions barred him from buying a gun, was charged with assault with a deadly weapon. He allegedly kidnapped an ex- girlfriend at gunpoint Aug. 11 and threatened to shoot her and himself.
When Jacqueline Maes escaped and was rescued by a passing driver with small children in the car, Handy riddled the vehicle with bullets, police said.
Cruz and Handy can try to buy guns from a private seller, but those guns are most likely traceable, either through serial numbers or sales records. Cruz, his friends, and customers want guns that can’t be traced, he said.
A lot of the guns sold and bartered on the streets are stolen — from cars, homes and pawn shops, said Rob McCloy, supervising agent in the local ATF office.
“Guns are one of the easiest things to move on the street,” he said.
McCloy did not know how many guns are stolen locally each year, but in the past year, about 60 felons in the Pikes Peak region have been arrested for having firearms.
The serial numbers had been filed off the guns Cruz had in his bag. McCloy said that’s common, although not foolproof — there are ways, he said, to “raise” the numbers again.
Wearing latex gloves when handling the weapons may seem prudent, but McCloy dismissed it as something Cruz and his friends picked up from the movies.
Nevertheless, gang members and others dealing in illegal weapons usually aren’t careless, McCloy said.
“These guys know where they get their guns,” McCloy said, adding in his experience, felons know if their guns have been stolen.
Buying a weapon from a private seller is a legal way to circumvent background and ID checks, although those guns might have registration papers. McCloy recommends that private sellers check the ID of their buyers so a gun can be traced if it is stolen or picked up by law enforcement.
Stolen guns are part of the illegal pipeline for criminals, but Cruz and his partners also rely on “tweakers,” methamphetamine addicts without felony records who can buy guns legally from retailers and at gun shows. A tweaker will buy a gun in exchange for dope, Cruz said. Meth houses and other homes tied to drug activity are often used as gun caches, places to store illegal weapons without the occupants knowing, Cruz said.
In addition to removing serial numbers, the weapons often are illegally altered — semiautomatics turned into automatic guns, barrels are sawed off to make them easier to hide or fitted with silencers.
They are careful not to sell guns to people outside of their “neighborhood,” or who don’t have someone trustworthy vouching for them.
“It’s just a matter of who you know,” Cruz said. “Everybody is related to someone, through gangs or drugs.”
It doesn’t bother Cruz that the guns are being bought by people who may use them to commit crimes or to shoot someone.
“It’s a part of the life,” he said. “You’ve already become immune to it.”
Copyright 2011 Freedom Newspapers, Inc.