A Vermont arms dealer imported the AK-47-style gun used to kill two children and a young man last month at a garlic festival in Gilroy, Calif., federal authorities told Seven Days. The company, Century International Arms, may also be tied to the weapon used in an even deadlier mass shooting this month at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.
According to Prentice Danner, a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s San Francisco field office, the WASR-10 semiautomatic rifle used in the California shooting came from Century Arms, which is based in Vermont and Florida. The gun was illegal to possess in California. Authorities have said that 19-year-old shooter Santino William Legan, who died at the scene after injuring 13 others, bought the weapon earlier that month at a Nevada gun shop. Legan also came equipped with a 75-round drum magazine and multiple 40-round magazines.
Less than a week after that attack, another would-be mass shooter posted a manifesto to social media listing the gear he planned to use. The writer said his “main gun” would be an “AK47 (WASR 10),” though he lamented that it had a propensity to overheat when fired 100 times in quick succession. “I’ll have to use a heat-resistant glove to get around this,” he wrote.
Authorities believe the manifesto’s author was 21-year-old Patrick Crusius, who they allege killed 22 people and injured 24 others at the El Paso Walmart on August 3. Because Crusius survived the shooting and could face the death penalty, local and federal officials have refused to release much information, including the identity of the gun’s manufacturer.
“We want to make darn sure he gets convicted,” Sgt. Robert Gomez, a spokesperson for the El Paso Police Department, told Seven Days.
In the more than five decades since Century Arms established a presence in Vermont, its weapons have found their way to Nicaraguan contras, Mexican drug cartels and American mass shooters. When a gunman wounded Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) and three others during a congressional baseball practice in June 2017, he was wielding a Century Arms SKS-style rifle with two 40-round magazines, according to a Virginia prosecutor. Publicly available records link the company’s guns or those of its Romanian supplier to another five mass shootings since 2007.
Despite the carnage, Vermont politicians have continued to go to bat for the company, pointing to the more than 100 people it employs at a manufacturing plant in the town of Georgia.
Members of the state’s congressional delegation have publicly defended Century Arms as a law-abiding business. And, as recently as last year, state legislators allowed the company to continue importing, manufacturing and exporting high-capacity magazines — even as they prohibited their sale within Vermont.
“It seems hypocritical to me,” Rep. Brian Cina (P/D-Burlington) told his colleagues on the floor of the Vermont House during a March 2018 debate. “Why would we ban something and then allow it to be made here?”
Despite his concerns, Cina and 122 other House members — Democrats, Republicans and Progressives alike — voted for the loophole. Only 21 opposed it. “I supported it with reservations because I didn’t want to harm a local business,” Cina explained last week. “But I found even my vote to be a hypocritical one. I own that.”
The precise nature and scope of Century Arms’ business isn’t clear. The closely held company, believed to be owned by the heirs of cofounder William Sucher, is highly secretive. Through its Washington, D.C., attorney, Mark Barnes, the company declined to comment.
According to data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Century Arms manufactured 453,016 guns in the decade ending with 2017. That number pales in comparison to the 14.4 million guns Sturm, Ruger & Company built during the same period and the 11.9 million Smith & Wesson did, according to ATF data.
But when it comes to importing military surplus weapons, Century Arms is an industry leader — and has been for some time.
According to a 2011 investigation by the Center for Public Integrity, PBS’ “Frontline” and other news organizations, the company bought “hundreds of thousands of rifles” by the pound from the Italian government in the early 1960s. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, it became a leading importer of Russian and Chinese SKS rifles, a precursor to the AK-47. More recently, it has focused on AK variants from former Soviet bloc countries.
Century Arms has had a particularly close relationship with Romarm, the Romanian government-owned manufacturer of the WASR, or Wassenaar Arrangement Semiautomatic Rifle. In a federal lawsuit filed in 2012, lawyers for Century Arms wrote that it had obtained more than $55 million worth of weapons from Romarm over the previous decade and had “the exclusive right to purchase certain firearms.” In a 2017 opinion related to another lawsuit, U.S. District Court Judge Christina Reiss of Vermont referred to Century Arms as Romarm’s “exclusive distributor in the United States.”
That suggests that if the El Paso shooter used a WASR rifle, it was likely imported by Century Arms.
Romarm officials did not respond to a request for comment.
For decades, the federal government has banned the importation of semiautomatic rifles with a certain kind — and a certain number — of military features. But according to the CPI/”Frontline” report, companies such as Century Arms have skirted the restrictions by adding additional features to slimmed-down guns once they reach the U.S.
In a 2018 memo prepared for the trial of Mexican drug lord Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, an ATF analyst described how 40 of the Sinaloa Cartel’s guns seized by Colombian authorities had been converted by Century Arms for sale in the U.S. Among them were five Romanian WASRs exported to Vermont with a low-capacity magazine, then reconfigured to accept a 30-round magazine.
Thirty-five of the seized rifles were semiautomatic versions of a Yugoslavian machine gun assembled in Vermont with an imported receiver thick enough to handle an attachable grenade launcher. According to the ATF report, they could be converted to fully automatic machine guns in about 10 minutes with $16 worth of parts.
It’s impossible to know how many Century Arms guns have been used in mass shootings because, since 2003, Congress has barred ATF from publicly disclosing data linking crimes to specific gun manufacturers and retailers. According to David Chipman, a retired ATF agent who serves as senior policy adviser to Giffords, a gun-control group, the policy is the result of Republican efforts to shield the industry from scrutiny and accountability.
“I don’t know how you make reasonable policy decisions if you don’t know how criminals get guns and what guns they’re getting,” he said. “But this is a policy by design, not by accident.”
Press accounts and a database maintained by the Violence Policy Center, another gun-control group, link Century Arms and/or Romarm rifles to mass shootings over the past 12 years in New Jersey, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Nebraska. That list is likely incomplete, because local authorities sometimes publicly identify guns used in crimes with no greater specificity than “AK-style” or “AK-variant.”
Part of the appeal of Century Arms’ WASR-10 is price. The weapon is “one of the cheaper AKs you can buy, which is why you see them around,” said retired ATF agent Stephen Barborini, who now works for a Florida police department. The WASR-10’s list price is $794.99, according to Century Arms’ website. Versions of the gun were available from Vermont dealers this week ranging in price from $696 to $822.
Over the years, Century Arms has counted on support from powerful allies in Vermont. Two months after another company’s semiautomatic rifle was used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the Rutland Herald asked the state’s congressional delegation whether its members were troubled by Century Arms’ presence in the state. “They are engaged in a lawful business just as others are that are involved in firearms commerce, employing many Vermonters,” Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said in a February 2013 written statement.
In a May 2013 letter, Leahy and then-governor Peter Shumlin urged then-president Barack Obama to allow Century Arms to import $30 million worth of American made, World War II-era weapons from South Korea. When the White House blocked the deal the following year, the company laid off 41 Vermont workers.
In a joint statement to Seven Days last week, spokespeople for Leahy and Welch said the delegation had “always taken seriously its responsibility to support Vermonters’ jobs” but also backed a federal ban on the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. A spokesperson for Sanders, who is running for president, said in a more fiery statement that the senator had for decades “strongly opposed the importation, sale and distribution of assault weapons, such as the WASR-10 and AK-47.”
As the Vermont legislature debated a major gun-control bill last spring, Rep. Eileen Dickinson (R-St. Albans Town) alerted Century Arms that it could be affected by the proposed state ban on high-capacity magazines. The company dispatched attorney Brady Toensing, then a Vermont Republican Party official, to lobby against the provision, which capped magazines at 10 rounds for rifles and 15 for handguns.
“This law would put them out of business,” he said at the time, noting that many of its guns came equipped with 30-round magazines. Toensing, who has since left the state and the party to work for the U.S. Department of Justice, declined to comment.
As the bill neared House passage, Dickinson and then-representative Corey Parent, a St. Albans City Republican, crafted an amendment that would exempt magazines in the hands of manufacturers and importers planning to sell them outside of Vermont.
“The goal, of course, was to maintain jobs in Franklin County,” Dickinson said last week.
According to Cina, the Progressive/Democrat from Burlington who called the amendment hypocritical, House Speaker Mitzi Johnson (D-South Hero) cautioned him after his floor speech that, if it failed, the entire bill might die. Johnson said this week that she didn’t recall the conversation with Cina but didn’t dispute it.
“My focus was on getting the strongest piece of legislation that we could, and I do think Vermont is better off with the magazine limit, with the few exemptions that we put in, than with no magazine limit at all,” she said.
Republican Gov. Phil Scott, who championed the gun-control bill and supported the Dickinson/Parent amendment, agrees. “We can only do what we can do here in Vermont,” he said, adding, “I’m not sure we can conclusively say that if we had not passed this amendment that those tragic events wouldn’t have happened anyhow.”
Parent, now a Franklin County state senator, said he found it “disconcerting” to learn that a Century Arms gun had been used in the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting, but he wouldn’t say whether he now regrets his actions.
Cina does. “If I could go back in time — if I knew then what I know now — I probably wouldn’t have voted yes,” he said last week.
The Burlington lawmaker might just get another chance. Rep. Maxine Grad (D-Moretown), who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said she’s open to revisiting the issue this winter.
“Anything’s on the table,” Grad said.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Century Armed | Vermont importer’s guns used in mass shootings”
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This article appears in Aug 28 – Sep 3, 2019.
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Langley was not subtle back then. Co-founder was Manny Weigensberg, whose friendship with Richard Secord enabled him to get all those “International” contracts. And run all those guns for America.
It is extremely hypocritical to ban the purchase and sale of high capacity magazines within the State to reduce the likelihood that Vermonters will die in a hailstorm of bullets while at the same time allowing a local business to ship high capacity magazines out of the State to increase the likelihood that Texans, Ohioans, and others outside of our borders will die in a hailstorm of bullets. Vermont has a supermajority of Democrats and Progressive in the Legislature. If we want to take the lead on gun control, we should actually do it. Legislators, stop being afraid of your power, stop bickering among yourselves, and stop studying issues to death before you act on them. Do your job, do it decisively, and do it quickly.
Why do we continue to blame firearm manufacturers for our mentally ill and/or others wanting to cause harm! Those wanting to cause harm always will, that is what we need to address. Handguns are illegal to possess is Chicago but yet somehow 3 people die a day from one there! This shows gun control does not lower violence.
I own dozens of firearms and I have hurt no one. But my family has been able to enjoy countless hours of skill building, team building, and motor skill exercises with them.
Steven Bourgoin just killed 5 vermont teenagers. Why are we not talking about the manufacturer of the car he used? That car killed 5 teenagers! Doesnt that sound crazy?
Ill leave you with this thought
A wolf attacks a sheep, the sheep dies.
Other sheep observe the killing, and notice that teeth kill sheep.
The sheep remove their own teeth for their own safety.
What a slanted article with a blatant agenda to achieve gun control! If you were truly focused on improving public safety and reducing deaths in this country then following your logic of blaming the manufacturer or distributor of products you would be railing against alcohol and car makers and dealers rather than gun makers. Drunk drivers kill far more people each year than lunatics with guns. Why is it that when a deranged evil person kills someone with a gun the call is to immediately ban the gun, but when a drunk person kills someone with a car, no one blames the car or the liquor maker but instead blames the driver.
“when a drunk person kills someone with a car, no one blames the car or the liquor maker but instead blames the driver.”
Actually, the law suspends the driver’s license — in other words, takes the car away from the driver. The same type of effect a universal background check would have — separating the guns from the person who fails the background check, the way the law separates the car from the person who fails the brethalizer check.
Jeane, you totally missed the whole point. When a drunk driver kills someone we DO NOT blame the car and then take cars away from every law abiding US citizen. Which is what we are doing with gun control. Instead when a drunk driver commits a crime we address the drunk driver as they were the one at fault. Exactly the opposite of what you are trying to say.
Maybe something like, let’s ignore the drunk driver. We need common sense alcohol control. Maybe close some imaginary loophole that really dosnt exist. Then add a “fee” on all alcohol. Why arent the politicians who keep taking more of my rights away not getting rid of theirs? Kamala Harris, Diane Feinstein,Gavin Newsom, ect. These criminals dont care about people’s lives. If they did why go after a symptom and not the cause? If they along with the media reported on the decline in gun violence (please suicide using a firearm removed as it should have been). The actual number of people who have been killed in mass shootings have stayed pretty consistent when add in the rise in our population. The left want control and the only way they can get that is having to rely on the to protect us. Calif Dem de Leon made a comment on the gas tax. He said we either vote for it or face cuts to emergency services. Now, what do you think they will say whenever they want more of our money and we have no 2nd Amendment? I promise you they will still have their firearms. But I will NEVER give up my firearms up. The government did not give me my rights and they have no authority to take them, period.
Century Arms is a good local company that employs Vermonters, pays taxes and otherwise contributes to the local economy. We should all show them some support and “buy local”. On the subject of violence: In the UK, where guns are all but completely outlawed, they have banned knives over 3 inches. Those who are intent on mayhem will find a way.
Meanwhile I can buy an assault knife for one dollar. Knives kill way people than rifles do. But yet I just purchased a machete from walmart last night for $4.87
Sandets, Leahy, Welch jointly sign a statement defending arms dealer who bribes them with 40 jobs. Same with EB5, Quiros and Stenger. Same with F-35 basing and VTANG. A big part of Congretional delegation’s job is to bring government investment to VT. If they were successful, they wouldn’t have to cater to arms dealers, money launderers, embezzlers, people buying US citizenship, and the notoriously wasteful and war mongering military industrial complex. We have a compromised delegation, one of them is running for president instead of doing the job he was elected to do, and they all have a poor job performance.
this article is hilariously garbage. Want to complain about something? how about the fast and furious program run by holder/obama that armed mexican cartels… how about the gov’t official in california (strictest gun laws) peddling confiscated guns back to the streets… government failure is not a businesses responsibility. personal choices are not a businesses problem. how can we determine how criminals get guns? uh. use your brain, illegally! straw purchases-illegal, stealing it – illegal, buying a restricted gun in another state- illegal. it’s not rocket science
@leatherhun Is it possible for you to say anything without bring up the F35? Anything at all? This is at least the third or fourth article that have nothing to do with it. When they get here are you worried you will have nothing to talk about anymore or will you kick it into overdrive?
At no point did you explain how a lawful company is responsible for third-parties using their lawful products in a criminal manner.
Are you going to slander BMW and Toyota for the criminal uses of their cars next? I understand that many criminal gangs prefer those brands and modify them further for additional utility in crimes….
Manufacturers don’t sell guns directly to the public. They sell them to distributors who sell to gun shops. That’s where the public buys them.
It’s up to the Law Enforcement to monitor those sales.
Why is it the manufacturers fault if their guns are misused? They are twice-removed from the sale and its not their responsibly to make sure all sales are properly conducted.
Given that they are the US largest importer of Eastern European weapons than it is high likelihood when such weapon is used it would be from them. WASR is made in Romania for them designed to be hard to convert to automatic (unlike the Yugoslav one, which is far better, and already civil-war tested).
Jeane When a drunk driver kills someone we do blame the alcohol and order him not to drink and drive. At some point he loses his license and his right to drive. If he continues he will have in interlock device put on his car so he can’t drive. I agree you can’t blame the car or alcohol but you can do things to prevent him from drinking and driving. IF he goes to the DMV to try and get a license that is suspended they will know about it and deny his license. He can’t go to a side place and buy one anyway. This is the problem with gun control. Some people shouldn’t have them and shouldn’t be able to by them from gun shows etc. They should be denied the right to own one if they are mentally ill or a danger in any way. Trues guns don’t kill. People do. So the people who do kill or are in danger of killing shouldn’t be allowed to have guns. No one but a mass murderer needs a weapon that can mass kill. Just like no one needs a car that can go 200 MPH unless they are racing.