October 18, 2010 07:24 PM UTC

Golyansky's Gun Case: The Part You Haven't Heard

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• by: Colorado Pols

TV ads attacking GOP Senate candidate Ken Buck, regarding his actions while working in the U.S. Attorney’s office to spike a case against an accused illegal gun dealer with Republican political connections, have been playing heavily for almost two weeks. As we’ve discussed several times, the case of Gregory Golyansky, and actions Buck improperly took to assist his defense, were originally made an issue in the Senate race by Buck’s primary opponent Jane Norton–Norton’s prediction that the case would come back to haunt Buck have proven accurate.

But the ad from Campaign Money Watch, like news reports on the case this election season, only tells part of the story here. The ad accurately reports that Buck was investigated for ethics violations, and that Buck’s assistance to Golyansky’s defense–while employed by the prosecution–was key to Golyansky “getting off the hook” on a number of serious gun charges. Golyansky was ultimately convicted of only one misdemeanor charge, but even that was enough to disallow him from selling firearms through his pawn shops in the future.

In a must-read guest column today in the Denver newspaper, former GOP Rep. Bob Barr, also an ex-U.S Attorney and board member of the National Rifle Association, hammers Buck’s actions to contravene the prosecution of this case. Barr rejects the notion that Buck was somehow acting conscientiously, and asserts that Buck’s actions directly resulted in lesser charges for Golyansky. Barr also notes that it was a Republican, John Suthers, who ultimately reprimanded Buck–this was not, as Buck as tried to claim subsequently, a “partisan effort” to discredit him. As a fellow Republican, what would be Barr’s interest in attacking Buck if it wasn’t legitimate concern?

And there is still another piece of this story that hasn’t been reported yet, at least not in relation to Ken Buck’s responsibility and involvement: how many people died on the wrong end of guns put on the street by Gregory Golyansky?

In June of 2000, reporter Dave Olinger of the Denver newspaper published a story titled “Pawnshop’s guns tied to gangs.” This story lays out the systematic way in which multiple-quantity gun purchases were made at Golyansky’s pawn shop–one woman purchased sixty-six guns from ABC Loan, many of which turned up on the streets of Los Angeles and used by gang members in crimes. Another purchaser, according to this story, came from New Jersey, obtained a Colorado ID and immediately began making large purchases of multiple firearms. This is the sort of activity that drew the interest of federal agents to Golyansky.

This story alleges that the 66 handguns bought by one woman, Stella Spears, were in fact “straw purchases” of guns made on behalf of one Randy “Rambo” Canister, who was too young to buy guns at the time, and who the story identifies as a member of the Corner Pocket Crips, an LA-area street gang. Federal prosecutors told Olinger that at least eight guns from Golyansky’s shop, traceable to Spears’ purchases on behalf of Canister, had been seized in the Los Angeles area.

But that wasn’t the worst of it: in 2005, Randy “Rambo” Canister was sentenced to life for a triple murder in Aurora. In June of 2005, Kieran Nicholson of the Denver newspaper wrote of Canister’s conviction for the execution-style murders of three people, helped by the testimony of the sole wheelchair-bound survivor, who testified that she and the other victims were stripped and sexually assaulted before being shot from behind.

In the 2000 article by Olinger, it’s reported that fully 40% of multiple gun purchases traceable to criminal arrests in the state of Colorado were made at Golyansky’s pawn shop: an astounding percentage considering how many gun shops there are in the state. The story also documents how buyers traveled from all around the state–and nation–to buy guns from Golyansky’s little shop.

As we’ve recounted in previous posts, it was Golyansky’s heretofore-underreported conversative political connections that apparently led to now-state Sen. Shawn Mitchell seeking out Buck in the U.S. Attorney’s office for “recommendations” on a defense attorney after Golyansky’s indictment. And Buck later fed the helpful internal information from his office back to that defense attorney, leading to the ethics investigation and reprimand in the video above.

Today, Golyansky is no longer allowed to sell guns, but the full facts of the cases that led to his indictment are a connection just now being made in the Senate race. Safe to say that the ads about the scandal stand to become much worse with this information added, and there is still time in the next two weeks for the ugly details to further damage Buck’s campaign.