A letter from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to law enforcement agencies across Southern California warning about an “emerging problem” of officers engaging in unlicensed firearms sales came just weeks after a Pasadena police officer’s home was searched and guns seized.

The March 31 letter from Eric Harden, the ATF’s Los Angeles Field Division special agent in charge, said the agency has discovered officers buying and then reselling handguns without a federal firearms license. That violates federal gun laws.

The ATF letter, first reported by The San Diego Union-Tribune, came after a Feb. 16 search of the home of a high-ranking Pasadena police officer. News reports at the time said several large gun cases were removed from the officer’s Sierra Madre home and loaded into ATF vehicles.

No arrests were made, but the Pasadena Star-News reported that an officer was placed on administrative leave in the wake of the search. A city spokesman said ATF said the search did not have anything to do with the officer’s work with the department.


Pasadena city offices were closed Friday. Authorities did not release the officer’s name, and a spokeswoman for the ATF declined on Friday to comment on ongoing investigations.

Harden’s letter said the agency recently has discovered officers who had purchased more than 100 “off roster” guns. Those are guns that are not on a California list of approved handguns that can be purchased by the general public. Some have been recovered at crime scenes.

The law, however, carves out a specific exemption that allows police officers to purchase such weapons.

The letter from Harden, which was distributed to sheriffs and police chiefs, talked about “the growing trend of law enforcement officials engaging in the business of unlicensed firearms dealings.”


It is an issue that the ATF has focused on before.

In 2011, the agency investigated and served search warrants in an investigation into deputies in the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department and officers in the cities of Roseville and Sacramento for selling weapons that the vast majority of California residents can’t purchase.

That investigation prompted bills by a state legislator to close the loophole that allows law enforcement to buy and sell such weapons. Both attempts in 2012 and 2013 were vetoed by Gov. Jerry Brown.

At the center of the issue is a list, or roster, of handguns the state has designated as “safe” and that can be legally purchased by residents.


The roster is a result of California’s 2001 Unsafe Handgun Act, which requires the state to make a list of guns deemed safe enough to sell. New micro-stamping requirements on bullets fired from semiautomatic pistols that took effect in 2013 have shortened the roster. In 2014, for example, 1,152 handguns were on the list. Currently, the number is down to 755.

There are exceptions to the law. Firearms that aren’t on the roster — dubbed off-roster guns — that were purchased before they fell off the list can legally be kept, and off-roster guns passed on to family members.

Some members of law enforcement can also purchase off-roster weapons. They can also legally resell them, including to Californians who would not ordinarily be allowed to buy them.

Officers primarily sell off-roster weapons through a transaction called a private-party transfer. After law enforcement officers acquire off-roster guns, there are a variety of reasons they may want to get rid of them.


The officers might not like the way they handle or decide to upgrade to a new model. At that point, California law allows them to transfer the weapon to another person who can legally possess a gun — law enforcement or otherwise — through a licensed firearms dealer.

State law limits an individual to five private-party transactions a year — though does not limit the number of guns that can be sold per transaction.

The government considers someone who frequently buys guns with the intent to resell them to be a firearms dealer — and that requires the person to then get a federal firearms license. The unlicensed selling of guns by law enforcement officers is one of the concerns Harden highlighted in his letter.

Joseph Silvoso, a Long Beach lawyer who specializes in California gun laws, said the problem of off-roster gun sales has been on the ATF radar for a number of years.


It’s also been clear, he said, that law enforcement officers aren’t fully aware of the requirements placed on them by state and federal gun laws. Harden’s letter seemed like a final warning, Silvoso said.

“Here’s our warning to you that we know you’re doing it, and we want you to stop,” he said. “And woe be unto you from this day forward if you are going to continue to do this after we’ve warned you.”

After the ATF investigation in the Sacramento area, then-Assemblyman Roger Dickinson sponsored a bill in 2012 that would have allowed officers to buy off-roster guns but not resell them, closing an exception in the law.

The Sacramento Democrat said the law didn’t make sense: guns which the state had decided were not safe could be legally purchased by law enforcement officers and then be sold to anyone — essentially putting banned guns into the state, undercutting the purpose of the safe gun list.


“It was hard to come up with a rational justification for it,” Dickinson, who left the Assembly in 2014, said Friday.

Brown vetoed the bill. The next year, Dickinson tried again. That bill would have cut the number of allowed private-party sales from five to two.

Brown vetoed that bill, too, saying there was no showing that two sales per year were any safer than five. ”I do not support restricting sales in this way without evidence that such restrictions would improve public safety,” the governor said in a veto message.

The issue of the law enforcement exemption has also come up in a lawsuit filed by gun-rights organizations challenging the safe handgun list. The suit said the law violates the Second Amendment of the federal constitution by infringing on gun-owner rights.


A federal judge in Sacramento ruled against the groups in 2015, and the case is on appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Donald Kilmer, one of the lawyers representing the groups challenging the list, also said the law enforcement exemption is a bad flaw.

“I have never understood why given the premise of the law that all handguns are unsafe unless deemed safe by the state, then the state turns around and says these guns are safe if bought by police officers,” Kilmer said Thursday. “If the government has made some determination that the gun is unsafe, then it’s unsafe for everyone.”

To read the article in Spanish, click here


Twitter: @gregmoran


greg.moran@sduniontribune.com