May 31, 1998

O ne day Leonard Carlson's walking away from a Wilkes-Barre psychiatric hospital, carrying a major burden. The next day he's walking away from the Edwardsville Kmart, carrying a high-powered rifle.

Carlson went home and blew his head off.

Although police seized the .30-.30 rifle, when family members arrived at the 44-year-old city man's apartment, Carlson's sister Barbara Storaasli found the gun carton.

Hurting, but not wanting to blame anyone, Storaasli felt compelled to make a point.

"I walked into the Kmart carrying the big red box," she said Thursday from her job in Virginia where she works as a children's guidance counselor. "I needed to talk to the people who sold Lenny the gun."

Carrying a few photographs of her brother, the soft-spoken woman asked the clerk if he remembered the man.

Vaguely, the clerk said.

Storaasli said Kmart employees were very articulate and professional while they explained how her brother could buy such a dangerous weapon despite his extensive history of psychiatric illness.

Kmart has no real procedures for what the trade calls "long guns," but the customer must complete state and federal questionnaires and produce two types of photo identification, Edwardsville sporting goods manager Bob Olson said.

"A drivers license or a state ID card," he said.

Storaasli said her brother never had a drivers license.

However it happened, Carlson bought a big gun.

Kmart corporate spokesman Steve Pagnani refused to release the answers Carlson provided on the federal form he filled out at the Edwardsville store.

"You'll have to ask federal authorities," Pagnani said.

That won't help.

The required federal form is worthless.

So is the state form.

Gun stores never send them in.

"Just for handguns," Olson said. "We keep all the other forms here."

A federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms spokesman confirmed that, despite the compulsory forms, law enforcement officials almost never see them. The only time a store is required to turn over long gun sales records is if it goes out of business, the ATF spokesman said.

A clerk, however, can stop a sale if the customer answers any of several questions "incorrectly."

Admitting to being a fugitive from justice can halt a sale, said another Kmart store employee. One more way to stop a long gun sale is if the customer admits having been adjudicated "mentally defective" or committed to a mental institution.

However, signing yourself into a mental institution does not prevent you from buying a riot shotgun or assault rifle in Pennsylvania.

Nor does signing yourself out of one.

All that's required for a person to take immediate possession is money; proof that you're 18; two forms of state picture identification; and a willingness to sign a form denying addiction to marijuana or depressants, being under criminal indictment or having been convicted of a crime serious enough to receive a prison sentence of more than a year.

But, lie if you like; nobody verifies the answers, anyway.

The most dangerous mental patient can simply falsify the application, walk into the street with a brand new pump-action shotgun and take out as many people as possible.

Carlson posed no danger to the public -- only to himself.

Now Storaasli wants police to destroy the gun that destroyed her brother.

Wilkes-Barre Police Chief William Barrett said he will gladly comply with Storaasli's wishes.

Carlson, a former stockbroker with a genius IQ, never owned a gun in his life, his sister said. But when he got so sick he couldn't think straight, he bought one.

Then he used it.

"All he had to offer is no longer there," Storaasli said.

A gun took it away.

Steve Corbett's column appears on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Write to him at stevec@leader.net