Holy crap - Kesselring's Gun Shop, the backstory

I had written before about a local gun shop and their closing and incredible auction (first, second and third) I never knew the backstory and it is a doozy -- from the Seattle Times:
Skagit County gun shop may have been worst in U.S.
For more than 65 years, Kesselring Gun Shop has been a firearms fixture in the Northwest, arming hunters, target shooters and police from one of the largest inventories on the West Coast.

Until surrendering its federal firearms license last October, the family-owned gun store also may have been the worst gun retailer in America.

It was nearly a decade ago when inspectors with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) first visited the sprawling gun store -- three flat-roofed white buildings clustered on a gravel lot along Old Highway 99 some 70 miles north of Seattle. There they discovered that 2,396 guns -- including hundreds of assault-style rifles and handguns -- were either stolen, lost or unaccounted for.
A bit more:
Kesselring Gun Shop opened in 1947 after Clarence Kesselring, a machinist and self-taught gunsmith, invented and later patented a revolutionary removable scope mount for hunting rifles. In doing so, he made his tiny shop a destination for big-game hunters from around the world. Kesselring mounts are still highly prized and sought after today.

For the past 60 years, the store has sold guns and shooting supplies only. Its aisles bristled with racks of assault-style rifles, shotguns and hunting firearms, and its counter cases displayed hundreds of handguns. Cases of ammunition were stacked thigh-high in every available space in between.
A tightly run ship:
Don Kesselring, the company's 59-year-old president -- who had worked there behind the counter since he was a teen -- said until that day he�d never seen an ATF inspector at the store. Bishop, the ATF spokeswoman, said no history of inspections before 2005 could be found.

What the inspectors discovered was a jumble of paperwork and a slipshod accounting system.

According to court records, the shop ran on a system of cash-stuffed envelopes kept by Frances Kesselring, the boys' mother. When receipts came up short, cash would come out of an envelope to make up the difference. When there was an overage, money was tucked into an envelope for a rainy day.

The Kesselrings routinely took cash from the till, buying everything from guns to cars and property, according to documents.

Gun dealers are required by the ATF to keep a master "acquisitions and dispositions" ledger, commonly called an "A & D book", to track each gun the store acquired and sold. Inspectors should be able to look at it, whether online or in hard copy, to quickly get a count of the inventory, then match it against what's on the shelves.

Not so at Kesselring. ATF had to bring in a cadre of inspectors who spent nearly four months untangling the mess. When the inspection was complete, ATF found violations in virtually every aspect of the shop's operation.
Lots more at the site -- quite the story. Evidence once again for the saying: "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.

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This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on April 28, 2014 6:05 PM.

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