Re: Chantilly Gun Show April 25,26 and 27 2014
Posted by:
Ripoff
()
Date: April 22, 2014 01:10PM
More information on the Chantilly guns show presented in hearings...
Mr. COBLE. Has the ATF ever furnished you with numbers indicating that firearms purchased at your shows end up or wind up in the use of crime?
Ms. GELLES. Actually, we have asked for those numbers since after the August show, right after it, starting August—September, we started requesting a FOIA presenting those numbers to us, and by our account from the Virginia State Police records, we have four to five arrests a year on average over the last 10 years with 45,000 public, bare minimum, coming in. So it is not a high number of people.
Mr. COBLE. Do you know, Ms. Gelles, whether or not a videotape was made during any of the gun shows?
Ms. GELLES. I know for a fact there was. Cameras placed in the showplace building, Bill Crenshaw, the manager of that building, told us so. We found this out because the ATF sent an agent or somebody from ATF up to the Chantilly building, which is called the Dulles Expo Center, and told that individual that he had the permission of the show promoter, which is C&E Gun Shows, Robert S. Elliot, and he said they had permission, and they absolutely did not have permission. And he said, well, it is—when he was speaking to this manager, he told him that they had already had permission and done it twice at the showplace, at which point we found out that they had actually done it already and had video of the entire public.
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Mr. COBLE. Mr. Lalime, how was this experience different from previous gun shows that you have attended?
Mr. LALIME. Never before had that happened to me. I don't think I had seen it happen to anybody else. I definitely know it had a detrimental effect on the attendance of gun shows. I know personally I wouldn't attend gun shows if I knew that was going to happen.
Mr. COBLE. Thank you, sir.
Ms. Gelles, my amber light is showing. I want to yield to Mr. Scott here. Let me conclude with this question. How many fewer weapons were sold that day as a result of the presence of a good number of law enforcement people?
Ms. GELLES. Well, I would have to suppose that if there were half the public there, then half the number of guns, which would have cost the exhibitors a great deal of money. I mean, my losses were 14,000, bare minimum, one show. Theirs were at least 300,000, probably more. Plus people did not bring in guns because they were afraid to.
Mr. COBLE. And let the record show that I beat the red light. I recognize the distinguished gentleman from Virginia for 5 minutes.
Mr. SCOTT. Ms. Gelles, is Virginia's one-gun-a-month law in effect at a gun show?
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Ms. GELLES. Yes, it is.
Mr. SCOTT. What paperwork needs to be completed to purchase a firearm at a gun show?
Ms. GELLES. People—you go to a dealer and you fill out a Form 4473 and an SP-65, which is the Virginia State Police background check.