The gun store in Tacoma, Wash., that once had the rifle used in the Washington-area sniper attacks was allowed to stay in business despite four investigations by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that found dozens of guns missing and serious violations of federal laws that require dealers to keep records of weapons they buy and sell, according to court records.
The information, contained in an affidavit made public by federal prosecutors in Seattle on Friday, depicts the store's owner, Brian Borgelt, as so sloppy about keeping records that guns were routinely stolen or misplaced, with no way to trace what happened to them.
Two employees of the store, Bull's Eye Shooter Supply, said they noticed that a .223-caliber Bushmaster XM-15 rifle was missing from a display case in August or early September, the affidavit said. But Borgelt did not report the gun stolen or missing as required by federal law.
The gun, which was linked to the sniper shootings by ballistics tests, was found in the car in which the two suspects, John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, were arrested.
The employees also reported that they had seen Malvo in the shop before the gun disappeared.
Despite the wealth of detail in the affidavit, it does not resolve the central question of how Muhammad and Malvo obtained the $1,600 rifle.
Neither Muhammad or Malvo could have legally bought the rifle. Muhammad, 41, is under a domestic violence restraining order, and Malvo, 17, is prohibited because he is a minor and an illegal immigrant.
A law enforcement official said the U.S. attorney's office in Seattle would subpoena employees of the store to testify before a grand jury to try to resolve how the rifle left the store.
The affidavit also reported that Borgelt did not file personal income tax returns from 1995 through last year. Since 1994 he has not filed a partnership tax return for Bull's Eye or a predecessor store, the document says.
But from 1999 to this year, more than $1.5 million in cash was deposited into the shop's account in Key Bank branches around the nation, the affidavit said.
Borgelt did not return phone calls to his store yesterday.
The affidavit said several current or former employees of Bull's Eye had told ATF inspectors that paperwork at the store was in "disarray."
ATF inspectors had uncovered record-keeping violations during audits at Bull's Eye and its predecessor store in 1995, 1998, 2000 and last year, the affidavit said, including 160 missing guns that Borgelt could not account for in the 2000 audit.
As a result, the ATF had issued Borgelt a warning letter, saying future record-keeping violations "will be viewed as willful in nature," a finding that would allow the agency to file criminal charges.
In particular, the inspectors found that Borgelt was not correctly filing the required forms for background checks.