Nov 15, 2007
Bridgeport, CT – Frank D’Andrea’s Connecticut gun shop was “a convenient, one-stop shopping place for violent and prolific narcotics traffickers, convicted felons and other prohibited persons,” federal law enforcement officials say.
His store sold hundreds of guns to gangsters and drug traffickers and was cited for hundreds of legal violations. But weak gun laws allowed D’Andrea to stay in business for more than two decades, until he was finally arrested and pled guilty to violating federal gun law. He was sentenced to three and a half years in jail, to begin in January 2008.
A new Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence report, Guns for Gangs, profiles this rogue firearms dealer. Federal authorities stated that between 2002 and 2004, D’Andrea’s shop had about 100 crime guns traced to it, ranking it as the second highest source of crime guns in Connecticut.
The report is available online at www.bradycampaign.org.
One of D’Andrea’s customers was gangster Frankie “the Terminator” Estrada, who said “it was common knowledge in the 1980s and 1990s that D’Andrea was the place to go to buy guns without any questions.” In just 13 months, from January 1988 to February 1989, gun trafficker Edward Schular admitted to buying at least 177 firearms from D’Andrea. D’Andrea also sold numerous firearms to gangster Danny Melendez – in one case D’Andrea admitted accepting as payment a “bag of cash” from Melendez filled with $5,000 in small bills. In 2006, a confidential witness reported illegally purchasing guns “in such an open and obvious fashion” that D’Andrea had to have known “precisely what was going on.”
D’Andrea had close ties to the gun lobby and was a star witness in a 1993 lawsuit partially financed by the National Rifle Association to strike down Connecticut’s assault weapons ban. In that case, D’Andrea testified that before the ban took effect he relied on semi-automatic assault weapons for about one-third of his sales. The gun lobby also helped gun dealers like D’Andrea stay in business, with the NRA vigorously lobbying to weaken federal gun laws that could shut down corrupt dealers.
“Gun dealers like Frank D’Andrea are an example of the terrible price we pay for weak gun laws that coddle corrupt gun dealers,” said Daniel R. Vice, Senior Attorney at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Guns for Gangs is the latest in a series of Brady Center reports exposing the record of reckless gun dealers who have profited from the supply of firearms to criminals. All of the reports can be accessed at http://www.bradycenter.org/gunindustrywatch. Gun Industry Watch is a comprehensive research effort of the Brady Center to monitor the gun industry and expose industry practices that endanger innocent lives.
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The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence is a national non-profit organization working to reduce the tragic toll of gun violence in America, through education, research, and legal advocacy. The programs of the Brady Center complement the legislative and grassroots mobilization of its sister organization, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence with its dedicated network of Million Mom March Chapters.