Erik Larson - Lethal Passage - The Story of a Gun

Marino held up his French I textbook.

TO BE A GUN DEALER IN America is to occupy a strange and dangerous outpost on the moral frontier. Every storefront gun dealer winds up at some point in his career selling weapons to killers, drug addicts, psychos, and felons; likewise, every storefront dealer can expect to be visited by ATF agents and other lawmen tracking weapons from their use in crime to their origins in the gun-distribution network. One must be a cool customer to stay in business knowing that the products one sells are likely to be used to kill adults and children or to serve as a terrorist tool in countless other robberies, rapes, and violent assaults. Yet gun dealers sell guns in America the way Rite Aid sells toothpaste, denying at every step of the way the true nature of the products they sell and absolving themselves of any and all responsibility for their role in the resulting mayhem. Guns used in crime are commonly thought to have originated in some mythic inner-city black market. Such markets do exist, of course, but they are kept well supplied by the licensed gun-distribution network, where responsibility is defined as whatever the law allows.

And the law, as written, allows much.

Guns Unlimited, of Carrollton, Virginia, demonstrates the kind of position every legitimate gun shop must eventually find itself in. Guns Unlimited considered itself a “good” dealer. Indeed, in the view of Mike Dick, the general manager of the company and the son of its founder, Guns Unlimited was not just a sterling corporate citizen but also a de facto deputy of ATF and a vital bulwark in the fight against crime and civil-rights abuse.

Nonetheless, Guns Unlimited sold Nicholas Elliot a Cobray M-11/9 under circumstances that led, early in 1992, to a jury verdict against the dealer on civil charges that its sale of the gun to Nicholas was negligent. The suit was filed by the husband of the teacher Nicholas killed.

Federal law bars anyone under twenty-one from buying a handgun, but Nicholas acquired his with ease through a “straw-man” purchase three months before the shootings, when he was fifteen years old. Straw-man purchases, in which a qualified buyer buys a handgun for an unqualified person, are the primary means by which America’s bad guys acquire their weapons, and one the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms cannot hope to put an end to, given the implicit and explicit restraints on its law-enforcement activities.

Nicholas not only knew the gun he wanted, but where to go to buy it. How he knew which dealership to patronize is not clear. Nicholas would not agree to an interview at Virginia’s Southampton Correctional Center, where he is serving a life sentence. It is an easy assumption, however, that Nicholas learned of Guns Unlimited from the dealership’s aggressive advertising efforts, which included TV commercials and giant billboards.

One peaceful weekend in September of 1988, Nicholas Elliot, apparently at loose ends, called his second cousin Curtis Williams, a truck driver, to ask if he would go with him to look at guns in a gun store. The two had talked about guns before. Nicholas proudly told his cousin how he had shot rifles in California with his father. Williams, in turn, told Nicholas about his encounters with weapons in the Marine Corps, which had given him advanced weapons training.

Nicholas had pestered him before about going to look at guns.

“He was calling me all the time,” Williams recalled during his trial in Norfolk federal court on charges of conducting an illegal straw purchase. (Most of what follows is derived from testimony during that trial and from the subsequent civil suit against the dealer, as well as related court documents and interviews.) “We had right many conversations on the phone, but that particular Saturday I was at home stripping my floors, getting ready to take the old wax off and rewax them.”

Williams lived in Norfolk, in a small bungalow with a creaky wooden porch and a front door heavily framed in decorative anti-crime grillwork. His neighborhood, shaded and neat, is known as Shoop Park, where streets are named for famous battles—Somme, Vimy Ridge, Dunkirk, Bapaume, Verdun, and so forth.

When the phone rang, Williams told his wife to tell whoever it was that he was busy—a response he should have held to.

His wife returned. “It’s Nicholas again.”

Nicholas. Everyone called him Nicholas, never the jauntier Nick, a reflection perhaps of his generally serious demeanor.

Williams felt sympathetic. The kid had few, if any, friends and spent most of his time with his birds. The boy was at loose ends. What would it cost to talk to him?

They exchanged greetings, then Nicholas begged him to take him to visit a gun store. Williams had put him off before and now felt guilty about it. He thought it over, again asking himself what harm it could do. It would lighten the boy’s day. He could take him out for a quick trip, maybe to Bob’s Gun Shop. Bob’s was close, an easy shot downtown. They could hop in the car, spend a couple of minutes at the store, and then come back. It would be a nice break from Williams’s work on the floors, and something nice for the boy. Williams could finish the floors when he returned.

When he picked Nicholas up, however, he realized Nicholas had a more elaborate expedition in mind.

“He wanted to go to Guns Unlimited,” Williams testified. “At that particular time I didn’t know where it was, but when he said Carrollton, Virginia, by me being a truck driver, I knew where Carrollton, Virginia, was.”

What it was, was too far. A lot farther than Williams wanted to go. Carrollton was little more than a wide space on Route 17 in Isle of Wight County, a rural wedge of land bordered on the north by the James River and on the east by the Portsmouth-Norfolk metropolitan area. It was a long drive, easily forty-five minutes from Nicholas’s house on Colon Avenue in Campostella. Ninety minutes minimum, back and forth. Extra time at the gun shop. Altogether, Williams suddenly faced an expedition that would take at least two hours.

Williams tried halfheartedly to put Nicholas off: “I don’t have much gas. And besides, I’m broke.”

“I’ll put gas in your car. Here.” Nicholas passed Williams $20.

Again, Williams gave in. “Won’t take twenty dollars to get there. I’ll take ten. About ten dollars will do it.”

They stopped at an Amoco gas station on Wilson Road, not far from Nicholas’s house, then set out for Guns Unlimited, most likely taking Interstate 264 under the southern branch of the Elizabeth River into Portsmouth, then picking up 17 for the rest of the drive. On the way, Nicholas talked about a gun he had come to admire, the Cobray M-11/9 made by S.W. Daniel.

“Man,” he said, “you’ve got to see that; it’s a nice gun.”

The easy, fluid commerce of guns embraced them the moment they entered the shop. An elderly couple browsing in the store approached almost immediately and offered to sell Williams a gun in a private sale. Such transactions escape federal scrutiny altogether. In principle, the owner of a gun cannot sell it to a juvenile or out-of-state resident. In practice, however, federal law doesn’t require the private seller to ask for any kind of identification or even to record the transaction.

“My husband has plenty of guns,” the man’s wife said. “He’ll sell you a gun, if you want to buy one.”

Williams declined.

He and Nicholas approached the display counters.

“Can I help you?” a clerk asked.

“We’re just looking around,” Williams replied.

Williams led Nicholas to a case containing a number of small, low-caliber revolvers and then did ask the clerk for some help. He asked to see a .38-caliber revolver. The clerk opened the case and passed the weapon to Williams, who then showed it to Nicholas. As the clerk watched from just across the counter, Nicholas said he wasn’t interested in seeing that particular gun.