Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 27, 1992 TAG: 9201270211
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DOUGLAS PARDUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
GUN BROKER FEARS TOUGHER SALES LAWS
THE OWNER of a gun store says he does all he can to prevent guns he sells from ending up in the hands of minors. But there is only so much he can do.
Max Caplan slaps his right hand on a sign tacked to a shelf behind the counter of Capital Sales, the tiny Northwest Roanoke shop where he buys and sells guns and nearly everything else.
" `Read it fellas!' is what I tell them."
The sign warns customers that they could go to prison for five years and be fined $5,000 if they lie on application forms when they buy a gun.
"I'd rather lose a sale than knowingly know that something illegal was going to happen with a gun I sell," Caplan says.
But Caplan has been in the gun business for 50 years, long enough to know that some guns end up in the wrong hands.
Now he's worried about what could happen to him and other legitimate gun dealers as a result of a jury decision in Virginia Beach earlier this month. In what is believed to be the first such ruling in the nation, a jury ordered an Isle of Wight County gun store operator to pay $100,000 in damages for selling a semiautomatic pistol that a teen-ager used to kill a teacher three years ago.
The jury decided that the gun shop had reason to know that an adult was improperly buying the gun for a 16-year-old. It's illegal for minors to buy guns, and it's illegal for an adult to buy a gun as a "straw purchase" for a minor.
Gun control groups say the case could help stem the illegal sale of guns to juveniles by making gun dealers financially responsible for what happens.
But Caplan says the case puts gun shop owners in an impossible situation.
"People who are going to commit crimes don't tell you what they are going to do, and I usually don't ask people what they want them for," Caplan says.
In the Virginia Beach case, according to reports, the jury believed the gun dealer should have known what was happening because the juvenile picked out the gun, gave the money to the adult and then carried the gun out of the store.
The gun shop operators said they had no idea the gun was intended for the minor.
Caplan says he would not sell a gun if he saw a juvenile choose it and give money to an adult to buy it. But, he says, there is really nothing he can do if a teen-ager and an adult look at a gun and the adult pays for it, fills out the required forms and passes the instant state background check.
"I don't know what you're going to do with a gun when you leave," Caplan says. "If I don't sell it to him, then he goes somewhere else."