What Washington gun shops do to keep firearms out of the wrong hands

Lawmakers at all levels have struggled to find common ground and actually pass much in the way of new gun regulations amid the latest debates.

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Even without new laws, gun shops are doing their part to try to ensure guns don’t end up in the wrong hands. Shops are going beyond background checks to keep from selling to someone who may be planning to hurt others.

Jason Chudy with the ATF in Seattle says they offer informal guidance to gun shops. But for the most part, it’s a judgment call.

“It really comes down to intuition,” he said. “Somebody can pass a background check, have the ID that’s required … the gun store owner, the firearms dealer — whoever it is — if they don’t feel right about selling that firearm to them we recommend that they don’t do that. There’s nothing in writing that says they can’t as long as the person passes the background check and has the required ID and meets any sort of local requirements, but when it comes down to it they’ve got to use their best judgment because it is their business.”

Just because a person passes a background check doesn’t mean a store has to sell to them.

Diana Pinto of Pinto’s Guns in Renton says her staff knows it’s up to them to make the call.

“I have known all of our sales staff for a very long time. I trust them to make a judgment call. So if they at all feel uncomfortable for any reason we refuse the sale. We really, really, really enforce that; that if you’re at all uncomfortable about anything do not sell a firearm.”

And Pinto says it’s a team effort.

“If someone is in the store that we’re just not sure of, we’ll kind of talk among ourselves and say, you know I’m getting kind of a funny read on this person, what do you think? Would you come up and listen, observe, help me you know get a kind of second opinion on [whether] their behavior is normal, abnormal, questionable?

Tiffany Teasdale, one of the owners at Lynnwood Gun, says they’re very proactive about making sure they’re not selling to dangerous people.

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“We definitely push spidey-sense,” she said. “We’ve been in this industry for a long time so you can pretty much recognize for the most part when somebody is doing something that they’re either going to be committing a felony, or they’re going to be hurting themselves. Generally, people have the same symptoms that are for different reasons and so you start kind of noticing things here and there. It’s never one person’s option, they’re always required to get some sort of management staff or one of us owners to get involved just to make sure that they’re on the same page with us.”

At Sharp Shooting Indoor Range and Gun Shop in Spokane, owner Robin Ball says her staff does plenty of digging before selling a gun.

“We’re going to kind of pick their brain a bit and find out what they’re looking for. If they’re looking for a sport gun for target shooting that’s going to be different than a hunting gun. If they’re looking to get involved in competition shooting then they’re probably not going to be looking at a small 22 handgun. So it just depends on what they want to use it for and we’re going to spend some time kind of getting to know them before we even start the transaction.”

And Ball trains all her staff on what type of behavior may be a red flag and what to do about it.

“Any comments made where they may make some off-hand comment about hurting themselves or others, we would stop the sale. And, fortunately, the federal law backs us up on any of that. We can stop a sale for any reason.”

She trains staff to be aware of people looking for any firearm, without caring what it is.

“We would delay that sale or steer them toward a class if we thought that that would slow the process down so that we can get a better view of them from a different environment.”

Slowing down a sale is a practice Teasdale also uses at Lynnwood Gun.

“There’s a lot of factors. It’s just not one factor of they’re acting strange because everybody acts strange at some point in their lives. So it’s putting all the keys to the puzzle together and then getting one of us or several of us together to kind of watch what they’re doing or how they’re saying things and see if other people are still feeling the same way, and at that point we’ll usually put them on a denial basis or a delay basis until we can get further investigation on what’s going on with them.”

And Teasdale is especially confident because many of her employees are retired law enforcement, and a lot of her customers are active cops.

“Nobody wants anybody to get hurt, I mean that’s not what these are intended for. These are intended as a tool and they’re intended for the gratification of being out and going and having fun. I mean, if you use them in the right steps they’re going to protect you or they’re going to be a fun tool that you can go play with. They’re not meant to hurt somebody just out of spite.”

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The Renton and Lynnwood shops both communicate with nearby gun shops to give or get a heads up about someone who has been denied a gun sale. Ball over at the Spokane store says they’re working on it.

“That is something that, locally, we’re trying to set up. ATF had suggested that maybe the dealers get together and do that because recently they had a situation where they were able to catch a criminal based on three or four different gun shops talking about this individual. So that recommendation came from ATF and I think that’s probably going to get underway shortly.”

Chudy says the ATF does all it can to help gun shops know what to look for.

“We don’t have any sort of formal training but we do federal firearms licensee seminars. We invite federal firearms licensees to come and attend this and it gives them best practices, gives them the latest guidance we have on the regulations. And in a place like that, they’re more than happy to ask any sort of questions, you know hey what I need to look out for? What are the best practices as far as making sure that the wrong people don’t get the firearms?”

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