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In Boston, New York and other cities throughout the nation, pairs of ATF agents and local cops set out to visit every local dealer listed in bureau files to inform them of their new obligations. The great majority of license holders turned out to be the kitchen-table variety. Most seemed to be hobbyists who merely used their licenses to buy guns at wholesale prices. But across the nation, police and ATF, prodded by the press, discovered kitchen-table dealers who had become conduits to the bad guys, in some cases selling thousands of firearms.
In Boston as in other cities, the joint ATF-police teams took a low-key approach. They asked a few questions and explained the new laws. They did not openly threaten dealers with investigation or prosecution, but the message was there. Of the city's 99 dealers, 82 voluntarily turned over their license or did not renew their application. "I think that tells you that bottom line, maybe they weren't complying," says Paul Evans, Boston's police commissioner. "They couldn't withstand the scrutiny, so they're out of business."
Nationwide, equally dramatic declines occurred. In 1993 Berkeley, Calif., had 34 licensed dealers; in 1996 it had two. Across the Bay, San Francisco knocked its population of dealers from 155 down to 10. Three-quarters of New York City's dealers gave up their licenses; so did 80% of Detroit's.
What effect this had on gun sales is unclear, but there is tantalizing evidence that the disappearance of these dealers contributed to a sharp reduction in handgun sales across America, particularly the cheap handguns sold by Lorcin and its peers in the Ring of Fire.
By law, manufacturers can sell guns only to licensed distributors, and they can sell them only to licensed dealers. Dealers, therefore, are the manufacturers' most important customers. Nationwide, 125,000 of those customers disappeared. Some dealers--like me--never bought or sold a single gun. Most of them probably sold only a few guns each year. Some sold hundreds, even thousands. The sudden shrinkage surely had an effect on sales and production. Says Andy Molchan, director of the National Association of Federally Licensed Firearms Dealers: "If you have 125,000 dealers who sell just four guns a year, how many guns is that?"
And the figures, though largely unreported by the mainstream press, are surprising. During the period of the sharpest decline in the number of dealers--between 1993 and 1996--overall U.S. pistol production fell nearly 60%, from 2.3 million to just under 1 million. Manufacturers of expensive, well-crafted guns reported only moderate decreases in production. Smith & Wesson, for example, actually saw its production of pistols rise more than 40% between 1993 and 1994, before its sales too began falling. Lorcin, by contrast, reported an immediate decline. In 1993 it produced 341,243 cheap pistols and became for that year the leading pistol producer in the U.S. In 1996 it manufactured only 87,497, a 74% reduction. Davis Industries, another maker of cheap pistols, experienced an equally precipitous fall.