Gun Shop

Authorities moved yesterday to shut down a well-known Philadelphia gun shop for violations of federal firearms laws in connection with selling guns to straw purchasers. The federal firearms license of Colosimo's Inc., on Spring Garden Street near 9th, will be revoked tomorrow. Colosimo's owner, James G. Colosimo, 77, pleaded guilty yesterday in federal district court on behalf of the gun shop to charges that it had made false statements and had failed to maintain proper records involving the purchases of 10 firearms between Aug. 4, 2004 and April 18, 2007.

The Southampton planning board Tuesday night unanimously approved a change- of-use application that will allow a gun shop to open in the town's business district by early September. George Petronis, who has owned gun shops in Riverside and Delran, will operate the shop in a building that formerly housed Skedter's Barber Shop. "New Jersey is a shotgun state," Petronis said. He said his shop would stock from 35 to 40 types of shotguns, rifles and handguns; ammunition, and smokeless gunpowder.

A 17-year-old Darby Township youth has been charged with stealing weapons from a Folcroft gun shop after gaining access by ramming the store with a stolen air-freight truck. The juvenile, who was arrested at his home Monday evening, was charged with burglary, receiving stolen property and criminal mischief. A juvenile court petition was to be filed against the youth, who has been released to his parents' custody, police said. Six of the eight weapons were recovered, police said, but two handguns were still missing.

DyAnne DiSalvo, who writes and illustrates books for children, is sometimes inspired by real life. So her next novel may involve a gun shop like the one that opened near her Merchantville home last year and made her heart sink. Firearms pervade our culture; they make some people feel secure and others afraid. Many people have no interest in owning (much less firing) one. And we'd rather not live near a commercial establishment that supplies folks who do. "I was completely startled when I saw a sign saying 'firearms and ammunition,' " says DiSalvo, who has lived in the borough for 10 years and is the mother of two grown children.

For the last year and a half, the borough has been desperately seeking businesses for its ailing main street. But now that businesses are showing some interest in the borough, residents are experiencing a change of heart - at least with one merchant. Finding a way to keep a gun shop out of Ambler is the reason behind the existence of a new organization, Project SAFE. More than 70 people attended the group's first meeting Sunday at the Church of the Brethren on Butler Avenue.

A local businessman has announced plans to open a gun shop in the heart of the borough's business district. Residents and merchants, many of whom expressed alarm at the news, are wondering what's next: adult books and tattoo parlors? "I don't think it's an appropriate use for Main Street, a place that sells itself on family values and as a good place to raise a family," said James Flaherty, Ambler's main street manager. "It sends a mixed signal. " Said Skip McClurg of the Montgomery County Martial Arts Center on Butler Avenue: "Professionally, I'm glad to see the block filling up. We're in a block with a lot of empty stores.

Gathering on Good Friday to show support for strict gun laws, several hundred protesters assembled outside a Kensington gun shop, urging the owner to sign a "code of conduct" to deter illegal firearms sales. An attorney for Larry Haney, owner of the Shooter Shop at Allegheny Avenue and Emerald Street, gave reporters a copy of a letter from the District Attorney's Office thanking Haney for his cooperation in combating illegal gun trafficking. "Your efforts have helped to make our city a safer place to live and work," said the letter, signed by Albert J. Toczydlowski, special assistant district attorney.

Colosimo's Inc., the embattled Philadelphia gun dealer that has been the target of protests by religious leaders, was accused by federal prosecutors yesterday of knowingly selling guns to straw purchasers. Jim Colosimo, the owner of Colosimo's Gun Center on Spring Garden Street near Ninth Street, was not personally charged. He could not be reached for comment last night. The charges against the business were contained in a criminal information, which means the defendant waived the right to have the case heard before a grand jury.

Controversy is once again visiting Colosimo's gun dealership. The shop, which was the target of religious protesters earlier this year, was accused yesterday by U.S. Attorney Michael Levy of knowingly selling guns to straw purchasers. Federal investigators determined that the gun shop, on Spring Garden Street near 9th, had sold a total of 10 firearms to three straw purchasers between Aug. 4, 2004, and April 18, 2007, according to court documents. The feds say Colosimo's identified straw purchasers as the actual buyers in transaction records, even though the shop "knew or had reason to believe that each was not the actual buyer, but a straw purchaser," documents show.

Two men and three juveniles - including one 11-year-old boy - were arrested early yesterday on charges of burglarizing a Collingdale gun shop and stealing 15 weapons and 250 rounds of ammunition, police said. The five were detained by police less than an hour after two witnesses said they saw several people run in and out of the Suburban Armory gun shop at 1008 McDade Blvd. while the alarm was ringing, police said. Charged in connection with the burglary were Khalik Keyser, 18, of Martin Lane in Chester; Leroy Taylor, 19, of the 1700 block of North 60th Street in Philadelphia; an 11-year-old Philadelphia boy; and two male teens, a 16-year-old from Chester and a 15-year-old from Collingdale.

Classic Pistol, a gun shop and shooting range packed with customers at lunch hour Tuesday, sits at the rear of a cinder-block office-industrial park in Southampton, Bucks County. Inside the barred-glass door, a day before President Obama's planned announcement of gun-control measures, suburbanites stood hip to hip at counters, looking over handguns dangling price tags for hundreds of dollars apiece. Propped along the wall were racks of rifles, including the type of AR-15 assault weapon carried into the Sandy Hook Elementary School last month by the Newtown, Conn., shooter.

Classic Pistol, a gun shop and shooting range packed with customers at lunch hour Tuesday, sits at the rear of a cinderblock office-industrial park in Southampton, Bucks County. Inside the barred-glass door, a day before President Obama's planned announcement of gun-control measures, suburbanites stood hip to hip at counters, looking over handguns dangling price tags for hundreds of dollars apiece. Propped along the wall were racks of rifles, including the type of AR-15 assault weapon carried into the Sandy Hook Elementary School last month by the Newtown, Mass., shooter.

THE DEATH of 20 little children and six courageous adults at Newtown, Conn., has managed to do what no other killing spree could - it has caused heretofore wuss politicians to take a stand and speak out about the need for sensible laws controlling the access to assault weapons and mega-capacity ammunition clips, and it has galvanized national public opinion in support of these efforts. It didn't happen after Tucson, where we saw the heartbreaking tragedy of the 9-year-old girl killed because she wanted to meet her role model, U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, or after Aurora, when a crazed gunman assassinated 12 people and wounded 58 more, shockingly using a 100-bullet clip to create this carnage.

"I've been around government and public policy a long time, and I can't think of another time when I had these same feelings. I don't really care if people criticize me for having emotions about this. - Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.), on changing his mind about opposing gun control. "That wiped us out. As soon as they start talking about assault-weapons bans . . . they're going off the scale. " - Fred Delia, owner of a gun shop in Philadelphia, regarding surging sales of assault weapons after the shootings in Newtown, Conn.

For Fred Delia, a shop owner in Northeast Philadelphia, business has been brisk the last few days, and it has nothing to do with Christmas. Delia runs a namesake store on Torresdale Avenue in Wissinoming. It's a gun shop. "The traffic has been huge," Delia said Thursday afternoon. "I can't stop to get a breath. " Gun stores in Philadelphia, the region, and nationally are reporting a sharp increase in weapons sales as a result of the mass killings at the elementary school in Newtown, Conn., a week ago. The buyers are telling store owners, who say sales have shot up 25 percent or more in the past week, that they are rushing to purchase guns before Congress can enact new restrictions on assault weapons.

The gun sat on the counter. The customer was ready to pay. But Delia's Gun Shop owner Fred Delia was still on the phone, waiting for a background check to get approved. So many people have been buying firearms in the wake of Friday's elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., that a typically five-minute call has been taking 30 or more minutes because the FBI's National Instant Criminal Background Check System has been under strain. The system is used to determine whether someone is eligible to buy a gun. That comes on top of already heavy demand.

IF YOU HAVE BEEN convicted of a crime in Pennsylvania and travel to another state to buy a gun, odds are your application will be denied. There's a federal computer database called the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS. State and local police, the ones who most often do background checks, can tap into NICS and find out about your criminal record in Pennsylvania. Since felons are forbidden to own guns, you will be denied. But, suppose you have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution in Pennsylvania and went to another state upon your release?

There's no more graphic or compelling proof that Pennsylvania lawmakers finally must get serious about gun-trafficking reform than the Sept. 13 murder of suburban Philadelphia police officer Bradley Fox. The arrest of a Philadelphia man last week on charges that he was the so-called straw buyer who provided nine weapons to the suspect in Fox's killing - convicted felon Andrew C. Thomas - exposes the true cost of Harrisburg's refusal to pass even modest...

Michael J. Henry, 30, had one thing going for him: a clean record. His lack of a criminal past allowed him to buy guns. Andrew C. Thomas, 44, had served time for forgery. He could not legally buy firearms, but he wanted lots of them, police said. Henry, of Philadelphia, and Thomas, of Bala Cynwyd, met in April. On May 30, Henry, allegedly acting as a "straw purchaser," went to a Jeffersonville gun shop and bought a .9mm Beretta - the weapon that authorities said Thomas used five months later to kill Plymouth Township K-9 Officer Bradley Fox. Though Henry could have legally bought the gun for himself, he broke the law when he did it for Thomas, Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said.

Michael J. Henry, 30, had one thing going for him: a clean record. His lack of a criminal past allowed him to buy guns. Andrew C. Thomas, 44, had served time for forgery. He could not legally buy firearms, but he wanted lots of them, police said. Henry, of Philadelphia, and Thomas, of Bala Cynwyd, met in April. On May 30, Henry, allegedly acting as a "straw purchaser," went to a Jeffersonville gun shop and bought a 9mm Beretta - the weapon that authorities said Thomas used five months later to kill Plymouth Township K-9 Officer Bradley Fox. Though Henry could have legally bought the gun for himself, he broke the law when he did it for Thomas, Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said.