"A relatively tiny number of gundealers in 22 states including Maryland and Virginia sold nearly 15 percent of the firearms traced by police to crimes nationwide in the late 1990s, according to a new study.

The report, by the Americans for Gun Safety Foundation, which advocates stricter enforcement of gun control laws, found that 120 of the nation's 83,000 licensed firearms dealers -- one-tenth of 1 percent -- sold about 55,000 of the 373,000 guns confiscated by police from 1996 to 2000. The guns either were seized after crimes or recovered after being stolen. Of those 120 dealers, 11 are in Maryland and 13 in Virginia, according to the study, released yesterday.

"There are a small number of gun stores that regularly supply the criminal market, and yet the government has turned a blind eye to those that traffic in firearms and crime," said Deborah Barron, spokeswoman for the foundation.

The 11 Maryland dealers cited in the study sold 4,362 of the guns, and the 13 Virginia dealers sold 5,628 of the weapons, the foundation reported. The study does not indicate whether a particular gun was sold by a store shortly before a crime with which it is associated or was sold years earlier.

Gun dealers and gun-rights advocates criticized the study yesterday, saying that dealers with high sales volumes will inevitably sell many guns that end up in police custody.

The foundation "is basically taking these numbers and attributing them to illegal acts which don't exist," said Sanford Abrams, president of the Maryland Licensed Firearms Dealers Association and owner of Valley Gun, a Baltimore business listed in the report as Maryland's third-biggest dealer of guns linked to crimes. "It does not mean that our dealers are doing anything illegal. It simply means that they are selling a lot of firearms, and a lot of them are stolen or end up in the wrong hands."

Tom Hill, a spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, called the report's criticism of a lack of federal prosecutions "dated." He said that since 2000 -- the last year covered in the report -- the number of license holders charged with violating state or federal laws has more than doubled.

Jim Kessler, policy director for Americans for Gun Safety and author of the report, said the study does not claim that all 120 gun dealers have committed illegal acts or even acted improperly.

"I'm not saying that every gun store on this list is corrupt, because I think some undoubtedly are not," he said. "But there are definitely stores on this list where their niche market is criminals. Whether they follow the letter and spirit of the law is based solely on their conscience, not on any fear of getting caught."

People listed on the FBI's terrorist watch list, which includes members of al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, are not barred from purchasing weapons in the United States, but authorities are allowed to search for criminal convictions or other reasons to stop the sales.

At the top of the report's list of Virginia dealers is Southern Police Equipment Co., near Richmond. The store's sales manager, Mitch Miles, said, "We totally cooperate with local, state and federal regulations.

"If [a gun purchaser] has the proper ID and they're not breaking any laws in this store, and they go through a state background check and they're not trying to make a straw purchase [a legitimate buyer purchasing guns for someone who legally cannot] -- as long as they're not doing anything illegal, there's not a whole lot we can do about that," Miles said.

Steve Schneider, owner of Atlantic Guns in Silver Spring, which ranked seventh on the Maryland list, called the study "misleading."

"Any dealer that's corrupt, any dealer that runs afoul of the law absolutely should be prosecuted, and they are prosecuted," he said. "It's a very small percentage of dealers that run afoul of the law. As closely as we're scrutinized and watched, it's stupid to do that."

Chris Cox, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association, called the report "a distortion of the truth."

"Guns can be traced for a variety of reasons, not just guns that are found at the scene of a crime," Cox said. Referring to guns that were stolen and recovered, he said, "A traced gun is not necessarily a crime gun." The study does not say how many of the 373,000 guns were used in crimes and how many were merely stolen property.

Previous studies have shown that large numbers of crime guns traced by police are sold by a small number of dealers. Yesterday's report, however, was the first to name the top sellers of traced guns. The ATF does not generally release such information.

The findings come as Congress debates legislation that would, among other things, forbid the ATF to publicly release gun-dealer records, which formed the basis of the new study. The legislation would also require the FBI to destroy background-check records within 24 hours of an approved purchase. Such records are currently kept for 90 days.

Gun-control advocates argue that the legislation would further limit the ability of law enforcement officials to track illegal weapons and crack down on dealers who sell firearms to criminals. A 2002 report by the General Accounting Office found that, in one six-month period, the FBI identified 235 purchasers who should have been forbidden to buy guns because they were felons or were otherwise not eligible.

Federal authorities recently disclosed that 12 people listed on the terrorist watch list had legally purchased weapons since the bureau began keeping track early last year. The revelation prompted the Justice Department to implement new guidelines allowing the FBI to hold up such sales for three days." (David Snyder, The Washington Post, January 13, 2004)

Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.