How felons like Trump gunman Ryan Routh, barred from owning guns, get firearms anyway
WEST PALM BEACH — It's easy to get a gun . For those who don't know how easy, retired ATF agent David Chipman likes to play a game.
"Let's say we want to commit an assassination," he said Thursday, scrolling through the site of an online gun vendor. "I need a rifle, so I press 'Rifle.' "
An assassin on deadline might not want to travel far, he said, so he filtered the results to only those in Florida. The list narrowed, but it still included reputable dealers — ones whose federal firearms licenses require them to perform a background check on potential buyers. He filtered those out, too.
With three clicks and in fewer than five minutes, Chipman procured a list of nearly 300 rifles for sale without paperwork to complete or proof of identification; ideal for the criminally inclined.
"I have no idea how this would-be assassin got their gun," he said of the man most recently accused of trying to kill former President Donald Trump. "But this is certainly one of the ways he could've."
Where and how Ryan Routh got his gun are among the many questions prompted by the second assassination attempt on the Republican nominee . Though a scratched-off serial number has stymied investigators' efforts to trace it, firearms experts have pointed to several possibilities.
They include what Chipman calls "awful but lawful" loopholes in the legislation meant to keep firearms away from felons like Routh. A North Carolina judge convicted the 58-year-old man of a felony in 2002 for possessing a weapon of mass destruction. The weapon, an SKS-style semiautomatic rifle, is the same type authorities say he aimed through a fence at Trump International Golf Club near West Palm Beach.
Routh's felony conviction would have prevented him from passing a background check at any brick-and-mortar gun store in the country. However, in Florida, he need only purchase a gun from an unlicensed dealer — found easily online, or at a gun show or the house next door — to skirt the background check altogether.
This legislative loophole and other vulnerabilities in the Sunshine State's patchwork of gun regulations means Routh, if he did acquire it in Florida, could have gotten his firearm any number of ways on his journey to West Palm Beach. Here are some of the most common.
Car thefts help supply firepower to convicted felons
Online marketplaces account for the majority of unregulated private sales, said Chipman. For the technically uninitiated, several other options exist, too.
One is theft. Research by the U.S. Department of Justice found that about a quarter of a million guns are stolen each year — a rate of nearly 700 per day. Because gun owners aren't required to report when their firearm goes missing, researcher Benjamin Dowd-Arrow of Florida State University said he suspects the actual number is much higher.
Many of these stolen weapons are used to commit additional crimes. Others are resold to prohibited individuals across the United States.
Ryan Routh: How the Trump-assassination suspect was caught
An analysis of FBI data by the gun-safety group Everytown found that the rate of guns stolen from cars in the U.S. tripled in the last decade. Floridians, who don't need a permit to carry a firearm, help fuel these numbers by keeping their guns in their cars, making them easy prey for thieves.
"The fastest way to ensure that people break into your house or car is to advertise you have firearms," said Dowd-Arrow, who describes himself as one of the few sociologists who study firearms in the United States.
Though a portion of guns are stolen directly from licensed gun shops, Florida law doesn't require stores to meet specific security standards to keep their merchandise safe. When asked what measures he takes to prevent theft, Wellington-area firearms dealer Mark Ramos lifted his T-shirt to reveal the handgun holstered at his hip.
He and his sales associate at JDM Tactical are both armed, he said.
Where do thieves steal guns? From unlocked cars in Palm Beach County, Post data shows
The 'Iron Pipeline' of Interstate 95: How traffickers buy and sell guns
Another way a gun enters the black market is through a "straw" purchase. This is when someone buys a gun on behalf of someone else who wouldn't legally be able to do so themselves, said Kelly Drane, a researcher at Giffords Law Center .
Some firearms traffickers travel to states like Florida, Georgia or Virginia, where gun regulations are more lax than in other states, and enlist straw purchasers to buy hundreds weapons. In Florida, there is no limit to how many firearms a person can buy.
The trafficker then sells the weapons in states with more restrictive laws. Drane described what's known as the "Iron Pipeline," a span of Interstate 95 favored by firearms dealers because it connects states with weak laws to those with strict ones.
"States like New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts are impacted by the weak gun laws of these states farther south on the 'Iron Pipeline,' " she said.
Another way Routh may have gotten his gun was by buying it legally before he became a convicted felon. Drane said hundreds of thousands of prohibited people still maintain possession of their firearms because no authority forced them to relinquish them.
Only a handful of states have laws trying to ensure that prohibited people actually relinquish their firearms, she said. Florida is not among them.
Hannah Phillips covers criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at . Help support our journalism and subscribe today .
