Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, February 24, 1992 TAG: 9202240173
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOSEPH COSCO LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
VIRGINIA IS GUNRUNNERS' PARADISE
Where once Virginia armed the Confederacy, today it is an armory for murder and mayhem in the streets of Washington, New York and other cities to the north.Statistics show that the commonwealth is the leading supplier of handguns for criminals in Washington and New York. Other cities have been hit by crime aided by Virginia firearms.
Last year in Washington, D.C., more than one-third of the 963 guns recovered from criminals and traced came from Virginia. The figure was about 50 percent in 1989 and 1990.
In New York from January to October 1991, 306 weapons, almost 30 percent of the 1,077 guns traced, were found to come from Virginia.
"Virginia is our No. 1 source state. It was been for a couple of years," said John O'Brien, spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in New York. "If we know of 306 guns from Virginia, who knows how many actually came up here?"
The gun most often transported out of Virginia is the 9mm semiautomatic pistol, a powerful sidearm favored by police departments. One-fourth of the guns confiscated and traced in Washington are 9mm, according to a study by ATF's Project Lead, which traced illegal firearms.
The Washington Project Lead study, which covered six months last year, concluded: "Gang association and movement is becoming more evident with the growing number of firearms purchased in Virginia, trafficked in New York and confiscated in Washington, D.C."
Virginia's relatively lax gun laws and its proximity to urban areas with tougher regulations make the state one of the top three retailers of handguns. The other two are Ohio and Texas.
Virginia law allows any Virginia resident at least 21 years old and not a felon to buy an unlimited amount guns - over the counter and on the spot. A number of cities - Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Portsmouth - have local regulations that make it tougher to buy a gun. But gun sales in Hampton, Newport News and Isle of Wight County remain virtually unregulated.
Gunrunners have little problem getting around the age and residency requirements. Resident ID cards are easily obtained from the Department of Motor Vehicles; straw purchasers are found in the projects or on college campuses.
Individual cases in U.S. District Court in Norfolk give only glimpses of the illegal gun trafficking in Hampton Roads, but together they provide a disturbing look at Virginia's contribution to crime in other states.
Some examples:
According to a recent indictment, Hursie Joe Wiggins, a convicted felon, was hired to buy guns for unspecified clients. He allegedly recruited a woman who bought two guns for him on March 4, 1991, from Ruffino's gun shop in Hampton. Three days later, Eric Cornell Wheeler had one of the guns when he and four other armed robbers stormed the Maryland State Employees Credit Union in Towson. A clerk on the second floor called 911, but four of the bandits fled before police arrived. Wheeler ran back into the building and took 13 hostages. Confronted by 100 county, state and federal officers, he surrendered.
Police think the Towson robbers were part of a gang responsible for a rash of robberies and several killings in the Baltimore and Wilmington, Del., areas.
Some 10 days after the Towson robbery, a suspect in that case was reportedly involved in a bank robbery, shootout and car chase in Wilmington that left one robber dead, two bandits wounded, and one police officer shot, as well as two officers and three passers-by injured in a wreck. It was the second bank robbery and shootout in Wilmington in 48 hours. A police officer was seriously wounded in the first heist.
Semiautomatic pistols from Virginia were used in both of the Delaware bank robberies, according to Kahau Morrison, resident agent-in-charge of ATF's Wilmington office.
Virginia guns also were carried by the Rayful Edmond drug gang in Washington, D.C.
Gregory Xavier Royster saw to that. Royster, a felon, hired another felon. The second man recruited his own wife and another confederate to buy at least 31 handguns from Guns Unlimited. The last batch was bought Aug. 8, 1988.
On Aug. 10, two of the guns were recovered outside Edmond's headquarters at 407 M St. N.E. A third gun was taken from Edmond's half brother in April 1989, and a fourth gun was recovered along with five large rocks of cocaine in Silver Spring Md., in March 1990.
Prosecutors say one of Royster's "joints" - as Edmond called guns - was used in a murder by one of Edmond's lieutenants. Virginia guns probably were used in some of the 30 or so murders believed committed by Edmond's gang before authorities put Edmond and more than two dozen family members and associates behind bars beginning in 1989.
The demise of the Edmond gang left plenty of drug gangs that have a seemingly insatiable need for handguns. And Virginia apparently is more than willing to meet the demand.