Online gun sellers are facing
greater scrutiny after the second-deadliest shooting in U.S.
history, spurring a nationwide debate and proposals to limit the
availability of firearms.
Among them is Armslist LLC, an Oklahoma-based online gun
marketplace, which is being sued for wrongful death by the
family of Jitka Vesel, whose killer shot her as many as a dozen
times with a weapon advertised on the site.
The lawsuit came two days before the Newtown, Connecticut,
massacre that left 28 dead, including the gunman, his mother and
20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It was the latest
mass shooting in a deadly year, following an attack in a
Colorado movie theater that killed 12 and wounded 58, and
another at a Wisconsin Sikh temple that left six dead.
“Under current law, there’s a gaping Internet loophole
which enables gun websites to facilitate illegal gun sales that
result in gun crimes and gun deaths,” said Jonathan Lowy,
director of the Legal Action Project at the Washington-based
Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and a lawyer representing
Vesel’s family. “Felons, the dangerously mentally ill and
domestic-violence abusers can buy guns no questions asked.”
A telephone listing for Armslist in Oklahoma wasn’t
available. Representatives of the company didn’t immediately
respond to an e-mailed request for comment on the lawsuit sent
through its website.
No Identification
Armslist.com enables illegal interstate arms sales because
it doesn’t make buyers or sellers provide identification,
according to the complaint filed in state court in Chicago by
Alex Vesely, the victim’s brother. There’s no background check
required for private gun sales in most states, Lowy said.
“They should be going after the criminal who committed the
crime,” Larry Pratt, executive director of Springfield,
Virginia-based Gun Owners of America, said in a telephone
interview about the Vesel case.
Online gun sales are “perfectly legitimate,” Pratt said.
“It’s called something that is protected by the Second
Amendment.”
Television station KSL in Salt Lake City temporarily
suspended firearms listings in its online classified ads after
the Newtown shootings, according to a statement Dec. 18 on its
website.
“Especially during this time when the country is feeling
so much sadness, we feel it’s the best decision to pause our
involvement in the firearms marketplace,” said Chris Lee,
president of Deseret Digital Media, which oversees KSL.com.
‘Critical Step’
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg commended the move in a
statement Dec. 19, calling KSL’s decision “a critical step
toward keeping illegal weapons out of the hands of dangerous
individuals.”
The mayor’s office last year said an investigation into
Internet gun sales found “a vast and largely unregulated”
market for illegal weapons, with 62 percent of private sellers
willing to provide firearms to people who weren’t likely to pass
a background check, according to a December 2011 statement.
The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News
parent Bloomberg LP.
In the Armslist lawsuit, Vesely alleges his sister’s
killer, Demetry Smirnov, illegally bought a .40-caliber handgun
from a private seller in Seattle he located through the website.
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The seller, who was convicted for his role in Jitka Vesel’s
death, admitted at his sentencing that Smirnov had paid him
extra because he lived out of state, couldn’t buy it legally,
and users of Armslist.com could easily evade gun laws, according
to the lawsuit.
“Armslist matches buyers and sellers solely based on
Armslist’s mandatory drop-down menus that steer illegal buyers
to illegal sellers,” Vesely said. “Armslist’s development of
content thus materially contributes to the illegality of the gun
sales it promotes.”
Jitka Vesel, 36, was shot 11 to 12 times by Smirnov in the
parking lot of the Czechoslovak Heritage Museum in Oak Brook,
Illinois, a Chicago suburb. Smirnov, a Canadian resident, had
stalked her after she rebuffed his romantic overtures, according
to Vesely. Smirnov, now serving a life prison sentence without
parole, paid an extra $200 for the gun that had been listed for
$400 because he couldn’t buy it legally, according to the
complaint.
Armslist says on its website that it was created by “gun
owning and gun loving Americans” because other Internet market
places shun firearms.
EBay Inc. (EBAY), Craigslist, Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) and Google Inc. (GOOG)
prohibit listing guns for sale, according to Vesely’s complaint.
The case is Vesely v. Armslist, 2012-L-013945, Illinois
Circuit Court, Cook County (Chicago).
To contact the reporters on this story:
Alison Vekshin in San Francisco at
avekshin@bloomberg.net;
Edvard Pettersson in Los Angeles at
epettersson@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Stephen Merelman in New York at
smerelman@bloomberg.net.