AN AMERICAN GUN IN MEXICO

How Does A Weapon Made In Tennessee, Sold In Missouri And Traded In
Texas End Up At A Drug Shootout In Chihuahua?

Late on the night of March 8, 2008, a Mexican military patrol in the
northern city of Chihuahua responded to neighbors' complaints about
armed men. The soldiers, part of Mexico's ongoing effort to curb
narco-trafficking violence, were met with a fusillade of grenades and
gunfire. In the end, six men whom officials described as members of a
drug gang lay dead.

On the government side, five soldiers were injured and one, Capt.
David Mendoza Gomez, was killed. Mexican authorities found a cache of
ammunition, grenades and high-powered firearms-including a .50 caliber
Barrett sniper rifle. An imposing weapon, nearly 60 inches long, the
long-range semiautomatic rifle is popular among the world's militaries.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said it
traced the rifle to John Shipley, a Federal Bureau of Investigation
agent in El Paso, Texas. Mr. Shipley was also a gun hobbyist who had
collected and sold dozens of firearms. He bought the rifle in August
2007-for personal use, he said-paying $8,500 to a Missouri dealer over
the Internet, and he sold it days later for $12,000 to an El Paso
sheriff's deputy, to whom he had sold other firearms. From there it
was sold to a Mexican national who resold it in Mexico, authorities
said in court filings.

The rifle's path from the Barrett company factory in Murfreesboro,
Tenn., to a dealer in Missouri, buyers in Texas, and eventually to a
narco-trafficking gang in Mexico is one small illustration of an
intractable cross-border trade that the U.S. and Mexican governments
say is fueling violence that has taken the lives of thousands.

Mexico has strict legal restrictions on gun ownership, with most
legitimate sales processed through one tiny store on a military base
on the periphery of Mexico City. Yet the country is awash in guns,
thanks mainly to the criminal cartels. Some of the same traffickers
who move drugs and illegal immigrants north also move guns south,
federal law-enforcement officials say.

In recent years, ATF officials say, traffickers have changed tactics
to evade law enforcement. Rather than passing through a single
middleman, guns may change hands four or five times or more en route
to a Mexican cartel member. Many traffickers prefer to tap small-time
buyers for a handful of purchases at a time. The odds are in
traffickers' favor as they hide illicit cargo amid more than 100,000
border crossings a day at El Paso.

"The more prolific [they are] and the more money they have, the more
they build different layers to protect themselves," says Mike
Bouchard, former assistant director of ATF field operations. "They
take [guns] home and wait a week or two. They know ATF and law
enforcement don't have resources to sit on a house and do
surveillance."

In Washington, a separate battle is brewing over what to do about gun
trafficking. In recent months, Republican lawmakers have accused the
Obama administration of approving an ATF investigative tactic that
allegedly allowed hundreds of guns to be sold to suspected
traffickers, including some guns that ended up in Mexico. One of the
firearms from the ATF's operation, called Fast and Furious, was
recovered at the scene of a gun battle with suspected smugglers in
which a U.S. border agent was killed in December. Attorney General
Eric Holder has ordered a Justice Department inspector general to
investigate the operation.

The ATF says that Fast and Furious, which was not involved in Mr.
Shipley's case, was aimed at tracking the smuggling to higher-level
traffickers, who run well-financed and sophisticated networks of
"straw" buyers-people who, often for a few hundred dollars, buy
firearms on behalf of others who can't pass background checks or who
don't want records of their purchases. Lawmakers and gun-rights groups
say that the ATF lost track of the guns and let them into the hands of
Mexican traffickers. Gun-rights groups accuse the agency of harassing
legal buyers and dealers while using tactics that exacerbate the problem.

Government officials say that ATF agents struggle to stem the trade of
a product that is legal and enjoys constitutional protection in the
U.S., bolstered by a pro-gun-rights ruling last year by the Supreme
Court. People can buy dozens of firearms legally and then sell them
later, so long as the guns are for personal use. Large-scale dealing
in firearms requires a federal license, but the dividing line between
such ventures and smaller-scale traders such as Mr. Shipley is hard to
draw.

Gun-rights groups are lobbying against a proposed ATF regulation that
would require gun dealers to report sales of multiple rifles and other
long-guns, matching regulations already on the books for sales of
pistols. The ATF says the regulations would help it to keep up with
shifting cartel preferences for high-powered rifles.

Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle
Association, says there's ample evidence to indicate that the vast
majority of weapons used by drug cartels in Mexico come not from the
U.S., but from Russia and China and via Guatemala and other Central
American countries. He suggests that the Obama administration should
improve enforcement of existing laws, rather than proposing new laws.

"If there's one gun that's going from the U.S. to Mexico, we're
against it and they should prosecute it," Mr. LaPierre said. "They
have plenty of laws to do that."

The investigation into the .50 caliber Barrett rifle recovered in
Mexico has crystallized two rival perspectives on the U.S.-Mexico gun
trade: that of the government, which is under pressure to curb illicit
sales, and that of gun-rights supporters, who believe that overzealous
federal agents are targeting gun hobbyists.

Mr. Shipley, a married father of two and the son of a retired U.S.
Army colonel, is a former Army helicopter pilot who served in the
first Gulf War. He was injured in a helicopter accident, according to
his family and attorneys, and joined the FBI in 1996, assigned to El
Paso. He joined an FBI SWAT team two years later and trained as a
sniper, earning honors as a top shooter.

In the government's telling in court, he was also running an illegal
gun dealership. After the rifle Mr. Shipley had sold ended up at the
Chihuahua crime scene, ATF agents searched his home in May 2008,
seizing 28 firearms, cash and records. An El Paso grand jury indicted
him in June 2009 on six counts, including dealing firearms without a
license. Prosecutors alleged that Mr. Shipley lied on ATF forms when
he said that he was purchasing firearms for his personal use. They did
not allege that he knew he was part of a trafficking operation. Mr.
Shipley pleaded not guilty.

Through his attorney, Robert Perez, Mr. Shipley declined to be
interviewed for this article. Mr. Perez said that there is no evidence
the rifle was actually used in the Chihuahua firefight.

A portrait of Mr. Shipley can be drawn from court documents, his
attorneys and from accounts on a website maintained by his parents to
support his defense. The site includes photos of Mr. Shipley as a
young Army Reserve officer, with close-cropped hair and an athletic
build. One shows him dressed in formal uniform at a military ball
beside a pretty blonde named Kathy, who became his wife in 1997. More
recent photos from hunting and other recreational trips show the same
muscular arms but a beefier build.

Mr. Shipley testified in court that the gun sales helped to build his
collection, which included nine handed down from his grandfather. By
his account, he also bought guns to learn more about them, and when he
sold them, he tried to make a profit, but not in an effort to make his
livelihood as a dealer.

"What he was doing was seeking to enhance his collection and seeking
to advance his professional skills, and to keep his proficiency up,"
said Mr. Perez, the lawyer, at the opening of Mr. Shipley's trial in
April 2010.

The Shipley website highlights an enthusiast's love of firearms. "John
has loved guns since he was about 2 years old. His educational tinker
toys and Lincoln logs were transformed into guns," the family site
says.

Mr. Shipley was thrilled to be paid for a job that allowed him to
practice his marksmanship, his family says, and stepped up his
firearms sales in 2005 to pay for his wife's medical treatment and
expenses when the couple adopted their daughter in September 2004 and
their son in August 2005.

Prosecutors tell a different tale-of a gun dealer who they say lied to
cover his tracks and to obstruct the investigation.

ATF agents tracking the .50 caliber Barrett rifle recovered in
Chihuahua were initially pleased when they contacted Mr. Shipley in
late March 2008 about the sale of the gun.

Mr. Shipley told investigators that he had sold the rifle to Luis
Armando Rodriguez, a jailer with the El Paso County Sheriff's Office.
At the time, Mr. Rodriguez was already under the scrutiny of ATF
agents for possible trafficking, prosecutors alleged in the Shipley
case. They were excited by the lead, authorities say, because of the
short "time-to-crime" period-less than seven months between the El
Paso sale and the time the gun turned up in Chihuahua. Normally that
period averages eight to 11 years, an ATF official said.

"They thought they had a great case," lead prosecutor Greg McDonald
later told jurors. The agents believed a fellow federal agent would
help to break the case open against a suspected prolific weapons
trafficker, the prosecution alleged. But instead, Mr. Shipley met the
agents in a parking lot on the west side of El Paso and handed over
false sales records, laying "a trail of deceit," Mr. McDonald said.
Mr. Shipley's lawyers said that the records were turned over in haste
and owners aren't required to keep them anyway.

Mr. Rodriguez frequently crossed the border, and investigators
believed he often sold firearms there, according to evidence presented
in the Shipley case. But investigators struggled to make a case
against him for smuggling.

Mr. Rodriguez, in an interview, said of the prosecutors' suspicions
against him: "It's a flat-out lie." Prosecutors tried to get him to
testify against Mr. Shipley, but he refused, Mr. Rodriguez said,
adding, "To me John Shipley didn't do anything wrong. We didn't do
anything wrong, everything we did was legal."

Mr. Rodriguez said he told investigators that he sold the .50 caliber
Barrett through a consignment store in El Paso, but prosecutors said
they couldn't find records for it. Instead, in a search of his home,
they found a handwritten sales record for the .50 caliber rifle and a
copy of the buyer's driver's license, they said. The buyer was a
Mexican national who was already under investigation in another gun
trafficking case, according to prosecutors. Mr. Rodriguez, in the
interview, said the sale record "wasn't from me, it was from the store."

The buyer told investigators he regularly traveled across the border
from Mexico carrying orders for specific weapons to buy. He told
authorities that he sometimes bought firearms in parking lots of gun
stores or from other straw purchasers on behalf of a Mexican gun
trafficking organization. In all, a group of straw purchasers involved
in the separate trafficking case bought at least 110 firearms from
multiple sellers for illegal shipment to Mexico, prosecutors alleged.
The buyer of the .50 caliber Barrett was indicted along with several
others, and he pleaded guilty to charges including smuggling goods
from the U.S.

Mr. Rodriguez pleaded guilty in 2008 to a single count of possession
of an unregistered firearm and served one year in prison. In April a
federal judge appointed a trustee to sell dozens of firearms and a
supply of ammunition that Mr. Rodriguez owned, since as a convicted
felon he could no longer possess firearms.

Mr. Bouchard, the former ATF official, who wasn't involved in the
Shipley and Rodriguez cases, finds fault with current gun laws that
hamper gun-trafficking investigations.

"The straw-purchase statute is very vague," he says. "You have to
prove the person went in with the intention of deceiving the
government and the gun dealer by saying they were buying for
themselves but were really buying for someone else." Buyers can easily
explain their actions even if they buy and sell firearms over short
periods of time, he says.

At Mr. Shipley's trial, his lawyer, Mr. Perez, probed the fine line
between an illegal dealer and a hobbyist who sells guns legally.

ATF case agent Frank Henderson testified that Mr. Shipley violated the
law by making "repetitive purchase[s] and sale[s] with a profit."

"Well, there's no dispute that liquidating a collection...that's
absolutely fine, right?" Mr. Perez asked.

"That's fine," Mr. Henderson said.

"But you're also entitled to sell to enhance your collection, isn't
that correct?"

"Right," Mr. Henderson answered. "To sell a firearm that was already
in your collection."

"How long do I have to have it before it's part of my collection," Mr.
Perez asked.

"There's no..." Mr. Henderson paused. "There's no definite answer on
that."

Prosecutors countered the defense by producing emails and Internet
listings that they claimed showed that Mr. Shipley used his law
enforcement connections to bargain for lower prices on guns, then
quickly offered them for sale at a profit.

In one instance, the prosecutor Mr. McDonald told jurors, records
showed "the buyer gave Mr. Shipley a check before Mr. Shipley ever
bought the gun." Prosecutors alleged that this indicated that he was
acting as any dealer would. Mr. Shipley's attorneys responded that the
buyer never ordered the gun from Mr. Shipley but instead only heard
that Mr. Shipley had bought the weapon and offered a higher price to
buy it from him.

Jurors deliberated for three hours before finding Mr. Shipley guilty
of all six counts. He has appealed his conviction, but the case has
been complicated by the fact that records from one day of the trial,
including Mr. Shipley's testimony, have been lost by the court.

Mr. Shipley is set to surrender June 10 to begin serving his two-year
sentence. His lawyer says he still hopes to be exonerated and to
return to his job at the FBI.

[sidebar]

One Gun's Travels

June 2007

The gun-an 82A1 sniper rifle-is shipped by manufacturer Barrett in
Murfreesboro, Tenn., to a distributor in Grand Prairie, Texas.

July 2007

It is then shipped to a dealer in O'Fallon, Mo.

August 2007

The dealer sells the gun via the Internet to John T. Shipley, an FBI
agent and gun hobbyist, in El Paso, Texas.

August 2007

Mr. Shipley sells the rifle to El Paso deputy sheriff Luis Armando
Rodriguez, who resells the gun.

March 2008

The gun is found at the scene of a shootout between a Mexican military
patrol and a suspected drug gang in Chihuahua, Mexico.