Here is a story from the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/26/national/nationalspecial/26GUN.html
John Allen Muhammad, the man arrested in the suburban Washington sniper case, owned at least two Bushmaster XM15 rifles in the last two years: the one linked to the shootings and another one that he sold at a gun shop in Tacoma, Wash., according to court documents and an executive of Bushmaster Firearms.
It is not yet known where or how Mr. Muhammad bought the Bushmaster rifle that the authorities say was used in the killings. It was the other gun that led to his being charged with illegal gun possession on Thursday in Federal District Court in Baltimore.
Mr. Muhammad resold that gun at Welcher's Gun Shop in Tacoma on May 23, 2000, according both to the warrant for his arrest and to John Welcher, the store owner. Under federal law, Mr. Muhammad was barred from buying or possessing a firearm because his second wife had taken out a domestic-violence restraining order against him two months earlier, in March 2000.
It took two years before the restraining order was entered in the F.B.I.'s main database, the National Crime Information Center, in May 2002, a bureau official said.
But that was still before he obtained the rifle used in the sniper attacks in June, the official said, noting that the Bushfield Company's records showed that the gun was not shipped until June.
Mr. Muhammad could have acquired that rifle any number of ways, the official said —
perhaps through a corrupt gun dealer who provided false information to the F.B.I. when a background check was performed, from a private seller or at a gun show, where no background check is required.
Mr. Muhammad's ability to buy the second Bushmaster rifle after the restraining order had been entered into the F.B.I.'s computer system underscores weaknesses in the nation's gun laws, advocates of gun control say.
"The system failed here," said Matthew Bennett, a spokesman for Americans for Gun Safety in Washington.
"Either he slipped through the cracks of the background check system, because his restraining order wasn't in the system, or he evaded a background check by buying his gun at a gun show or from a private seller," Mr. Bennett said.
.........
The arrest warrant suggests that Mr. Muhammad may have also had a third rifle that looked like the others. A friend of Mr. Muhammad in Tacoma, Robert Edward Holmes, told the firearms bureau on Tuesday that when Mr. Muhammad and "an associate" visited his home six months ago, they displayed an AR-15 assault rifle. The AR-15 is the civilian version of the military's M-16, and the Bushmaster rifles are copies of it.
That date would have been before Mr. Muhammad could have bought the Bushmaster rifle used in the sniper killings.
As for why it took so long to enter the restraining order into the F.B.I. computer, law enforcement officials said it was not unusual for the process to take months or longer.
A Justice Department study last January estimated that there were two million restraining orders around the nation, but that only 590,000 had been entered in the system.
A bill that would give the states $375 million a year for the next three years to catch up on the backlog passed the House of Representatives but has been stalled in the Senate by opposition from Republicans.
In recent years bills to close the so-called gun show loophole, in which a background check is not required when a gun is bought at a gun show, have faced strong opposition from the National Rifle Association. None have passed.
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