Where do criminals get guns? I'll explore that question a lot this year because the supply of guns to people prohibited from having them remains a principal cause of Baltimore's violent eruptions. When a convicted felon can allegedly walk out of his house with an AR-15 style semiautomatic rifle and a 9 mm handgun and kill two men in a dispute over a parking space, we need to know: Who enabled him? Where'd he get the guns?
If he stole them, the case ends there.
But if he bought them, then those who supplied the weapons ought to be held accountable, too. The way I see it, they are accomplices to murder.
It would create an additional demand on law enforcement, but the arrest and conviction of people who provide a felon a gun ought to be a public priority. It's one thing — and no small thing — to get the guilty plea or conviction of a shooter. But we'd have a safer society if, in every case involving a felon with a gun, the state tracked down his enabler, too.
Getting that information could be part of plea agreements. In fact, it would probably be essential because this can be needle-in-haystack stuff.
Across the country, nearly 200,000 guns were reported lost or stolen in 2012, according to the National Crime Information Center.
Maryland's share of that was 1,964. Following the national trend, most of our missing guns (all but 69 of them) were stolen.
In fact, police say the rifle used in the parking-space homicides of Jan. 9 in Northeast Baltimore was reported stolen out of Frederick County several years ago. (The handgun has not been recovered.)
The man accused in the parking-space case, 34-year-old Dennis Padgett, is a felon; he should not have had any gun, but police say theyrecovered three firearms and a large stash of ammunition from his house.
I want to know more about this, and I've heard from many readers who share the curiosity: How did those guns get in that house? If Padgett purchased them, who was the seller? If the seller can be identified, the law should go after him, too.
While many guns are stolen, some get into the hands of criminals simply through straw purchases at gun shops.
I just came across one such case on the Eastern Shore.
It involves two men, old buddies who've known each other since childhood: Daniel Welch and Jonathan Sutton, both 36 and both from the Chestertown area. They were indicted in October on federal firearms charges and entered guilty pleas last week.
According to the U.S. attorney's office in Baltimore, Welch was a convicted felon; as such, he was prohibited from buying guns.
So, starting in January 2011, he had Sutton do his buying for him.
The indictment describes a classic straw purchase scheme, though "scheme" suggests some elaborate deceit when what Welch and Sutton did was similar to what I used to do with my son: Give him some money and send him into Royal Farms for milk while I waited in the car.
First, Sutton and Welch drove around Queen Anne's County, drawing cash out of ATMs. They had at least $1,700 when they arrived at Chesapeake Guns in Stevensville on Jan. 29, 2011. Sutton went inside and made a purchase: a Smith & Wesson MP5-22 handgun, a Mossberg Persuader 500 shotgun, and a Century Arms SKS rifle.
According to the indictment, Sutton signed a federal declaration that he was purchasing the guns for himself and no one else. But he picked up the guns three days later and turned them over to Welch.
Ten days later, he returned to Chesapeake Guns and bought a Marlin rifle and turned it over to Welch.
A year later, Sutton supplied his old buddy with two more guns — a Remington 597 rifle and a Ruger Single Six revolver that federal prosecutors say he purchased from "a private party."
In addition, when deputies from the Queen Anne's County sheriff's office busted Welch in June 2013, they found a 20-gauge, pump-action shotgun he later admitted stealing from a neighbor. He had sawed off part of the gun's barrel and removed the serial number.
Welch faces 10 years in prison, Sutton five. They'll be sentenced in April.
While Welch-Sutton is a federal case, the straw purchases they admitted to are exactly what the Maryland General Assembly had in mind when it toughened up the state's firearms law in 2013. The law now requires people who want to buy a gun to submit to a background check, fingerprinting and four hours of gun-safety training.
Opponents of the measure called it an infringement on liberty.
But it's no such thing. The intent is to discourage straw purchases, to keep old buddies from buying firearms for felons. It's one piece of what should be a steady, comprehensive effort to reduce the size of the black market of guns that end up causing so much havoc and death. More to come.
Dan Rodricks' column appears each Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday. He is the host of "Midday" on WYPR-FM.