Rayco Sales losing gun dealers license

Rayco Sales operates on Old Dairy Road across Egan Drive from where Jason Coday shot and killed Simone Kim in August 2006. (Photo by Matt Miller/KTOO)
Rayco Sales operates on Old Dairy Road across Egan Drive from where Jason Coday shot and killed Simone Kim in August 2006. (Photo by Matt Miller/KTOO)

A long-time gun dealer in Juneau plans to sell off his inventory after receiving notice of the pending revocation of his firearms dealer’s license.

“I may just shut it down,” says Ray Coxe, owner of Rayco Sales which has been in business for over 45 years on Old Dairy Road.

Coxe recalls receiving the Federal Firearms License (FFL) revocation letter on Jan. 27. He only has fifteen days from that date or until Wednesday, Feb. 11 in which he can sell firearms.

“If somebody were to come along and want to buy them all, I’d probably liquidate them at my cost and get rid of them once and for all rather than try to sell them and make some money on it,” Coxe says.

Coxe says he has several options, including a review of the FFL revocation in U.S. District Court. He is also drafting a letter asking for a six-month extension of his dealer’s license.

A temporary extension of his revoked FFL would allow him to clear out his inventory by selling the firearms locally, advertise them on gun broker internet sites, or transfer them to other local dealers for sale. Coxe says he has over a $100,000 worth of firearms in stock. But many would sell better elsewhere in the country.

Coxe used the example of a .222 Remington.

“That’s not a hunting rifle for Alaska because if you’re out in the woods and run into a bear, it’s inadequate,” Coxe says. “Very few people would buy that gun to be used for a hunting gun. The only reason that they’d buy would be take it out to the range and shoot it for target shooting. (In) Phoenix, Arizona, they’d love to have it to shoot jackrabbits with at 200 yards.”

After all the firearms are sold, Coxe says he’s not sure what he’ll do. He may keep the store open while selling ammunition, knives, and other sporting goods. But he’s 82 years old and he says his ill wife is in a nursing home down south near other family members.

“If I go down there, what will I do?” Coxe asks. “Here, I’m with the store, it’s 7 days week, anywhere from 8 to 12 hours a day. And I enjoy it. I enjoy the people I meet and the products that we sell, and this kind of thing. I just don’t really know yet.”

Coxe says he’ll have a better idea of the future of the store after the outcome of a civil trial that was scheduled to start on Monday, Feb. 9. (Update: As of Monday morning, the trial had been postponed to a date that is still to be determined.)

The family of Simone Kim, the painter who was shot and killed by Jason Coday behind Juneau’s Fred Meyer store in August 2006, filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Coxe and Coday. Coday walked out of Rayco Sales with the murder weapon after leaving $200 on the counter.

Mark Choate, representing the Kim family in the lawsuit, recently argued for sanctions against Coxe and his attorney for allegedly waiting until three weeks before trial to produce records relating to the license revocation and results of audits conducted as early as 2007 of firearm transactions at Rayco Sales. Choate said in a pretrial hearing last week that they cannot compel the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to produce records about alleged missing firearms at the store.

Choate claims that Coxe hid crucial evidence for years and actually misled the court by repeatedly selling guns in violation of federal law without a required background check. Choate says an opinion by the Alaska Supreme Court was based on a false record, and justices may have interpreted the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) as unable to apply to gun dealers that engage in unlawful commerce if the missing evidence about the audits was presented earlier.

Coxe’s attorney Tony Sholty says there was no hiding of documents. In a filing submitted to the court, Sholty says Choate’s arguments are nothing but “white noise intended by plantiffs to distract from the compelling evidence that (Mr.) Coday took the rifle without Ray Coxe’s knowledge or permission.”

In addition, Sholty says Coxe did not think about passing on documentation related to firearms audits in 2012 and 2013 because the case had moved out of Juneau Superior Court while the Alaska Supreme Court was then considering the constitutionality of PLCAA in the matter. Coxe produced the relevant audit records after Choate in November 2014 requested any evidence of previous communications or correspondence between Coxe and ATF.

In a pretrial hearing last week, Sholty said “Ray Coxe does not have the best filing system.” But he also said that Coxe “is not lying or selling guns off of the books.”

Among the list of proposed sanctions, Choate says he wants Sholty and Coxe to pay for extra trial costs and the jury to be instructed about Coxe’s alleged hiding of evidence. He also wants to limit Coxe’s own testimony about missing paperwork on gun transfers and Form 4473 firearms transaction records.

Coxe says federal authorities focused on errors in transaction record forms during an FFL revocation hearing last November in Juneau, such as the entries designating county location when Alaska does not have counties.

Coxe also concedes there were records missing for firearms transfers, or when someone purchases a weapon from a seller out of town. For example, a gun dealer in another city will transfer it to a dealer in the buyer’s location before the buyer takes possession of the firearm. The second dealer then takes a small fee for documenting and handling the transfer.

Coxe blamed the bulk of missing transfer records on poor record keeping by former employees. In some cases, Form 4473s were filled out, but they were misplaced by his sales clerks. He says firearms were not stolen or sold illegally as some have alleged. Other guns were reported as missing, but they were later found in the back in the store.

“The bottom line lies with me for not overseeing it closely enough,” Coxe says. “But I can’t do everything, and you hire these people and you think they can do it.”

Coday is no longer a defendant in the lawsuit since he did not respond to its filing while serving his 101 year prison sentence for the murder of Kim.

Various sources such as fflgundealers.net and gunbroker.com list as many as 33 holders of a Federal Firearms License in the Juneau and Douglas area.

(Editor’s note: Story amended to include update on trial delay and restore a missing word in a quote.)

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