AK-47-type guns turn up more often in U.S.

updated 4:17 p.m. ET March 26, 2008

KENNER, La. - The cake had been served and the children were jumping up and down in a big, inflatable castle when the birthday party turned to bedlam.

Clarence McGraw saw the visitors coming, guns drawn. The screaming began.

Children ran everywhere in the courtyard of the low-income apartment complex; adults fell to the ground. Bullets flew. The killers wounded three youngsters, but for reasons police can't explain, it was 19-year-old McGraw they were after.

As McGraw lay in the center of the green square, the gunmen stood over him and fired again. He was shot 15 to 20 times in all.

The Sept. 15 killing was remarkable in that it took place in the most innocent of settings — the fifth birthday of twin boys. But it was unremarkable in that one of the guns brandished was an AK-47-type rifle — a powerful, rapid-fire weapon that has long been used in Third World conflicts but is increasingly being used in American street fights.

Figures from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, obtained by The Associated Press through public records requests, show a marked increase in the number of AK-type weapons traced and entered into the agency's computer database because they had been seized or connected to a crime.

The number of such tracings rose even while the federal assault weapons ban was in effect and has continued to climb since its expiration.

Seven-fold increase in 7.62mm guns
Since 1993, the year before the ban took affect, ATF has recorded a more than sevenfold increase in 7.62x39mm guns — which includes the original Russian-made AK-47 and a variety of copycats from around the world. The number of AK-type guns rose from 1,140 in 1993 to 8,547 last year.

Since 2005, the first full year after the ban's expiration, ATF has recorded an 11 percent increase in such tracings.

ATF says the increases in the first half of the 1990s are partly the result of wider use of its weapons database by local law enforcement agencies. But after that point, the numbers reflect a real increase in tracings of AK-type guns, the agency acknowledged.

The numbers corroborate what police chiefs around the country have been saying: AKs and other so-called assault weapons are terrorizing their communities and endangering their officers.

The numbers are reflected in some of the most horrifying violence of the past year, including a deadly shooting rampage at a department store in Omaha, Neb.

They're reflected in the growing number of police forces equipping their officers with higher-powered guns to match the bad guys' firepower.

And they're reflected in a single 72-hour period in September that started with the shooting of four Miami-area officers and ended here, in a drab apartment complex just outside New Orleans.

Miami traffic stop
On Thursday, Sept. 13, Jose Somohano, a 37-year-old officer with the Miami-Dade Police, was cut down during a traffic stop in suburban Miami by a man with an AK-type weapon. Three other officers — armed, like Somohano, with handguns — were wounded, one of them suffering a bullet wound the size of a grapefruit in her leg.

By midnight, the gunman, Shawn LaBeet, had been shot to death by police after a huge manhunt.

Police have refused to say how many times Somohano was hit or how many shell casings were found.

The officer's wife, Elizabeth Somohano, had gone off to her job at an insurance company earlier that day, and just before noon, Jose's sister reached her at the office. "Have you heard?" she asked. Something was going on in the area Jose patrolled.

Elizabeth called his cell. She text-messaged him, over and over. She called her kids to see if they had heard from him. She checked the Internet to find out what was happening, and learned that officers had been shot and a gunman was on the loose.

A colleague of Jose's — one of his closest friends — called Elizabeth and told her to stay put. He showed up at her office, and when their eyes met, he broke into tears.

"He didn't make it," he told her. She screamed.

Later, she took some comfort in knowing that her husband had eaten lunch that day, which meant he must have seen the hot-pink note she had slipped into his lunch bag along with his chicken salad-on-pita sandwich: "I love you, macho man."

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