Guns used in shootings came from Tenn.

March 15, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Two guns used in high-profile shootings this year at the Pentagon and a Las Vegas courthouse both came from the same unlikely place: the police and court system of Memphis, Tenn.

Law enforcement officials told The Associated Press that both guns were once seized in criminal cases in Memphis. The officials described how the weapons made their separate ways from an evidence vault to gun dealers and to the shooters.

The use of guns that once were in police custody and were later involved in attacks on police officers highlights a little-known divide in gun policy in the United States: Many cities and states destroy guns gathered in criminal probes, but others sell or trade the weapons in order to get other guns or buy equipment such as bulletproof vests.

In fact, on the day of the Pentagon shooting, March 4, the Tennessee governor signed legislation revising state law on confiscated guns. Before, law enforcement agencies in the state had the option of destroying a gun. Under the new version, agencies can destroy a gun only if it’s inoperable or unsafe.

A nationwide review by The Associated Press in December found that over the previous two years, 24 states — mostly in the South and West, where gun-rights advocates are particularly strong — have passed 47 new laws loosening gun restrictions. Gun rights groups are making a greater effort to pass favorable legislation in state capitals.

John Timoney, who led the Philadelphia and Miami police departments and served as New York’s No. 2 police official, said he doesn’t believe police departments should be putting more guns into the market.

A spokeswoman for the Memphis police said gun swaps are a way to save taxpayer money.

One of the weapons in the Pentagon attack was seized by Memphis police in 2005 and later traded to a gun dealer; the gun used in the Jan. 4 courthouse shooting in Las Vegas as sold by a judge’s order and the proceeds given to the Memphis-area sheriff’s office. Neither weapon was sold by the Memphis law enforcement agencies directly to the men who later used them to shoot officers.

In both cases, the weapons first went to licensed gun dealers but later came into the hands of men who were legally barred from possessing them: one a convicted felon; the other mentally ill.

The history of the two guns in the recent attacks was described by officials from multiple law enforcement agencies on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the investigations.

At the Pentagon, gunman John Patrick Bedell carried two 9 mm handguns, one of them a Ruger. Law enforcement officials say Bedell had severe psychiatric problems.

Nineteen days later, the officials say, Bedell bought the Ruger at a gun show in Las Vegas. The gun already had changed hands among gun dealers in Georgia and Pennsylvania by the time Bedell bought it. Officer Karen Rudolph, a Memphis police spokeswoman, said her department traded the weapon to a dealer in 2008 for a gun that was better for police work.

The trail of the gun used at the Las Vegas federal courthouse is older and harder to pin down. Johnny Lee Wicks, an elderly man enraged over cuts to his Social Security benefits, opened fire with the shotgun at the security entrance to the courthouse. He killed one officer, Stanley Cooper, and wounded another.

Wicks, like Bedell at the Pentagon, was killed by officers’ return fire.

Before that courthouse attack, what records exist suggest officers in Memphis confiscated that gun in 1998.

A judge in Memphis ordered the sale of the shotgun as part of a criminal case, and the proceeds of that sale went to the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office.