A month after a Boston gang member was sentenced in Maine to 17 years in prison for trafficking in guns bought through Uncle Henry's, the Boston Herald has announced it will stop distributing the classified bulletin in the city.
"There's concern that firearms for sale in the book end up on the streets of Boston, and we didn't want any part of that," Herald spokeswoman Gwen Gage told The Boston Globe.
The publisher of Augusta-based Uncle Henry's Weekly Swap or Sell It Guide says he'll look for another Boston-area distributor.
The classified guide has resisted calls to ban gun ads that are not placed by licensed dealers, which would require a buyer to get a background check before purchasing. Private sales of guns in Maine require only that the person be a Maine resident.
Activists and prosecutors in Boston say that restriction isn't keeping gun sales arranged through Uncle Henry's from contributing to violence in the city.
"Uncle Henry's has been explicitly linked to black market firearms entering Boston and being used to commit crimes on our streets and neighborhoods," Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.
The case of Stanley Jenkins is a recent example. Jenkins was a member of the Dorchester-based street gang the Franklin Hill Giants. Sentenced June 26, he was convicted of helping distribute about 4 kilograms of crack cocaine throughout southern Maine out of a house in North Yarmouth, and recruiting surrogates to buy more than 20 guns through Uncle Henry's.
Boston police recovered five of the guns from gang members or during incidents where the gang members were present. They haven't found the others.
Maine guns showing up in Boston got attention a few years ago, when an advocacy group put a message on a 250-foot billboard in Boston, claiming that Maine's lax gun-control laws were helping fuel violence in the city.
Prosecutors said then that most illegal guns in Massachusetts come from dealers there, and that northern New England states contribute just a fraction.
Massachusetts requires buyers of guns from private sellers to pass the same criminal background checks required of buyers from federally licensed dealers. In Maine and several other states, private buyers of firearms must provide only proof of residency in that state.
In another case, Boston police traced a .45-caliber Glock they obtained in a 2003 arrest to a Maine resident, the last person known to have bought it. The Maine man told police he had sold the gun through Uncle Henry's a month earlier to a man he knew as Michael Smith.
Boston police said Smith was actually Michael Fowler of Lynn, Mass., convicted in 2006 of selling about 20 guns in Boston that he had bought illegally in Maine and New Hampshire. Court records said eight of nine guns police recovered from Fowler had been listed for sale in Uncle Henry's.
Cathie Whittenburg of Westbrook, director of the New England Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence, said Saturday that the Herald's decision to stop distributing Uncle Henry's was admirable.
"I was very glad to see it," she said. "Criminals buy guns through Uncle Henry's. There's no question about that."
Whittenburg said the private sales are loopholes because they allow people to escape a criminal background check.
"A private seller cannot run a background check even if they want to. They do not have access to the FBI (background) system," she said. A bill before the Maine Legislature this year would have required all gun sales to be processed through a licensed dealer, but it made little headway, she said.
Uncle Henry's publisher, Kevin Webb, said he'd look into other distribution methods in Boston, adding that the guide's Web site would continue to list firearms.
"We are not in the business of trying to enforce the law," he said. "I think it's time in this world that people start taking responsibility for their actions. People kill people; guns don't kill people."
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