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Philly man charged with Montco straw purchases in latest suburban gun bust

Steven Lee Smith straw purchased nine firearms and sold them to people legally barred from buying the weapons themselves, authorities said.

A Philadelphia man who authorities say bought guns for people barred from buying weapons themselves has been charged with firearms violations and related crimes.

Steven Lee Smith, 28, was apprehended Sunday and charged with 18 felony firearms sales offenses and related crimes after police sought him for over a month.

The arrest is the latest in a regional crackdown on straw purchasing, the practice of legally buying guns and reselling them to those looking to evade government background checks.

While the practice is more common in Philadelphia, the city’s collar counties have begun to focus on offenders who purchase the firearms at suburban gun stores in a trend that experts say makes gun crimes easier to commit.

Smith is alleged to have legally purchased nine handguns — most at a retailer in Bucks County — over a six-month period in 2022 and later reselling them.

Police recovered three of those weapons, according to the affidavit of probable cause for Smith’s arrest. Montgomery County got involved when one of those guns, a 9mm semiautomatic pistol, was turned in to Bridgeport police. Smith purchased most of the handguns in a short period of time authorities said, and purposely attempted to obscure the guns’ serial numbers.

Two of the guns were recovered during arrests of people barred from purchasing firearms due to previous criminal convictions.

Kate Delano, a spokesperson for Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele, said Monday that the arrest demonstrated the office’s commitment to prosecuting straw purchasers.

“We’re always going after them,” Delano said. “We’re always investigating.”

Those efforts led county investigators to arrest a Glenside man in May for allegedly distributing 15 straw-purchased firearms, some of them later used in Philadelphia homicides.

That suspect legally purchased a high-quantity of firearms — seven in total — over a short amount of time, investigators said, and bought them online before picking them up at a Montgomery County retailer.

And in December, police arrested a Philadelphia man for selling straw-purchased firearms he bought at stores in Bucks and Montgomery Counties.

Smith is being held in the Montgomery County prison on $99,000 bail. In Pennsylvania, the penalty for purchasing multiple firearms on behalf of another person is 10 to 15 years in jail.

Straw purchases have become the target of Philadelphia investigators in recent years amid high rates of gun violence. Nearly 900 straw-purchased weapons were recovered in the last three years, according to an Inquirer report. Police found that at least dozen were used in crimes.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department announced in May that it would begin regular inspections of the county’s gun retailers to make sure shops are complying with federal and state firearms laws.

Retailers are at risk of having their licenses revoked should they fail a series of inspections, the sheriff’s office said. The move would be a first among local governments in Pennsylvania, where the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives typically conducts such inspections every 10 years.