Wow, Brenham Gusmith dies after ATF probe.

[matefrio]

I didn't know him but John R. Bosse passed away after being called on the carpet buy the ATF.


[URL="http://www.brenhambanner.com/articles/2011/12/19/obituaries/obit01.txt"]http://www.brenhambanner.com/articles/2011/12/19/obituaries/obit01.txt

[URL]http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_8_8/472260_Brenham_Gun_Dealer_Shut_Down.html[/URL][/URL]

 

[ZX9RCAM]

Sad!

 

[majormadmax]

First, there is a lot fishy with this story. Read the thread, one person did a good job addressing the suspicious comments in the first post...

....He recently got called to meet with ATF officials in Houston. ATF doesn't call the dealer to come to them....they do the compliance inspection at your licensed premises. If he has already had a compliance inspection and was missing records or had sufficient errors or ommissions in those records then they may have started revocation action against him. in that case he was an idiot for not taking a lawyer with him to the meeting.

.....Out of several hundred gun sales he has made in the last year, about 10 transactions popped up....What does this "popped up" mean?

Did they discover missing 4473's? Missing bound book entries? Errors on the 4473's? Errors in the bound book? Although ATF considers each and every mistake or error as "willful"....they rarely attempt to revoke an ffL because the dealer forgot to sign a couple of 4473's. On the other hand "forgetting" to record the buyers ID, the serial number, manufacturer, model etc of the firearm or most importantly forgetting to run a NICS check on a buyer on a more than a couple of trnsactions will get you spanked.

....John had taken photo copies of my carry permit and other transactions which proved that I was worthy of purchasing this gun...I've done a thousand transfers this year........and have NEVER photocopied a damn thing....because its not required by ATF and there is not a single reason to do so. Photocopies of a carry permit mean nothing if the 4473 is missing that information.

....Didn't make a damn to the henchmen at ATF! They had one thing in mind, take away the mans dealers license and nothing he could do would change that!...This email tells us exactly nothing about what the ATF did or what the dealer was supposed to have done. Without a scrap of information this email is next to worthless.

None of these transactions were suspect, but they didn't care, they wanted to get another small dealer out of the way! How do you know? ATF CANNOT arbitrarily revoke a dealers license because they want to. It sounds like they DID find fault with his recordkeeping and gave him the option to fight the license revocation or voluntarily turn in his license. Without more information this email is useless..

Secondly...

Well, those of you who know John know he is in his early 70's, smokes like a steam engine, and isn't in that great of health

...so acting like it was the ATF that killed him is more than a bit of a stretch, it's a long one.

Regardless, may he rest in peace!

Cheers! M2

 

[matefrio]

I'm not implying that it's what killed him. I will say it may have taken some of his will away to be audited like that.

 

[majormadmax]

Obviously the stress of the ATF probe could have been a contributing factor, but with a title such as 'Wow, Brenham Gusmith dies after ATF probe' it surely makes it seem like they had more involvement in his passing than they did. He was already in poor health and smoked heavily, and the chance that he was doing something wrong/incorrectly--whether intentionally or otherwise--would have likely been a source of stress as well!

It's sad that he passed, but there are several factors in this story that don't make sense. Until we get some facts, I think it is wrong for anyone to insinuate that the ATF had anything to do with his death.

And I'm not saying it was you, I am referring to some of the comments in the linked thread.

 

[Ghostie]

Agreed...horrible thread title, also horrible OP on the linked thread.

With all due respect to the man who passed, it sounds like he may have made a few errors in his paperwork (Bad enough that even his own lawyer told him it worth fighting)