Pasadena Star News: When a Pasadena police officer becomes a gun dealer

Chief Sanchez in his junta hat

Mod: Another intriguing development in the Vasken Gourdikian / Pasadena PD gun running scandal, as conducted out of a garage in Sierra Madre. This time the excitement is in the form of a Pasadena Star News editorial that ran in our local daily newspaper of record a couple of days ago. Just in case you have joined that vast community of folks who wouldn't pick up a newspaper at gunpoint (so to speak), here it is for your perusal. It is big news, and we could be close to some actual arrests in this case. Arrests that could go to the top of The Rotten Rose's police department.

When a Pasadena police officer becomes a gun dealer: Editorial (Pasadena Star Newslink): Citizens don’t give up their fundamental rights if they become police officers — including the constitutional “right to keep and bear arms.” But, outside the firearm needs that come with their jobs, neither do they suddenly gain new Second Amendment rights allowing them to become major armaments dealers without any restrictions on what guns they may sell and to whom they may sell them.

Given the scandal swirling through the Pasadena Police Department after Lt. Vasken Gourdikian was put on paid leave earlier this year when federal authorities raided his Sierra Madre home and confiscated guns that he had a large side-business selling, Chief Phillip Sanchez was certainly correct last week to put a halt, temporarily at least, to a department practice that encouraged such arms dealing.

There is every reason to believe that in the future the halt ought to become permanent.

What the department is suspending is a practice of issuing letters that help officers bypass 10-day waiting periods to purchase guns in their private lives. The move came less than a week after it was finally announced that Gourdikian, an officer very much in the public eye in recent years as deparment spokesman and a top aide to the chief, received seven such waivers over a four-year period.

Augusto Pinochet's junta hat

He was apparently selling quite a large number of guns out of his house — dozens of them between 2013 and earlier this year, when his online handle at a firearms website ceased activity after the raid by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Some of the guns he sold were not available to the general public, and required the waiver that was so often signed off by his superiors.

Again, peace officers have rights to legally buy and sell guns, though the public might wonder, given their line of work, how many extra firearms they want to see on the streets. And here it’s clearly a question of quantity. Gourdikian has not been charged with any crime, and the investigation has been very hush-hush. But over the last four years, he offered to sell more than 70 firearms and gun parts, including 45 pistols, 15 rifles — some of them semi-automatic ones — and three shotguns. At least 63 were later marked as sold.

The Police Department’s waiver policy deserves a thorough review, and future restrictions are in order.

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