Spoons Shocks Me

I was doing my early morning before-work reading today, and I happened upon this on Spoons' website.

I'll cut to the scary part: (quoting a quote)

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced the weapon to the Blue Island Gun Shop, which received the gun from the manufacturer in 1966 and sold it to Milton R. Beuck. The last official record of the gun was 1983, when Beuck registered it legally in Chicago. [Before the Chicago gun ordinance went into effect later that same year--Ed.]

Beuck told police he had sold it to a Chicago police officer, identified by sources as Schott, at a bar in 1994, Bayless said. The police officer sold the gun to a second officer sometime between 1994 and 1997, according to a friend of the first officer. The second officer died in 2002 and it is unclear what became of the gun, Bayless said.

"It was not registered and it should have been," he said.

On Thursday, police charged Beuck, who is 58 and homeless, with a misdemeanor for failing to keep records of the gun, authorities said. In Bond Court Friday, Cook County Judge Marvin Luckman ordered him held on $100,000 bond and assigned him to the Cermak Hospital division of Cook County Jail.

The high bond was ordered because of the seriousness of the eventual crime in which the gun was used and because there was an outstanding drunken driving warrant for Beuck, said Jerry Lawrence, a spokesman for the Cook County state's attorney's office.

There is an 18-month statute of limitations on the misdemeanor charge, Lawrence said, but because the law requires a gun owner to maintain records for 10 years, Beuck was currently violating the law by not maintaining a record of the 1994 sale through next year.

Wow, you know. Keep those records on you at all times if you have the misfortune of becoming homeless. We, of course, don't know the circumstances of Beuck's homelessness, but still. 100k bail.

There is the issue of a 1995 warrant for a DUI. How much bail goes where, dunno. The figure just shocked me. I'd like to know the allocation.

hln

Posted by hln at September 3, 2003 06:05 PM | Linkage/Kudos