Here is an interesting article from WV- the wife did wrong. Note the ATF agent's summary near the end:
" December 21, 2007
Woman gets 1 year for guns
# Woman bought ammunition, guns for mentally ill husband
By Andrew Clevenger
Staff writer
A Kanawha County woman was sentenced to a year and a day in prison in federal court on Thursday for buying guns for her mentally incompetent husband, who was briefly a “person of interest” in the sniper-style killings in 2003.
Sharon Caldwell, 51, of Winifrede, pleaded guilty via information in October to buying nine guns between June 11, 1999 and December 12, 2003 as gifts for her gun-collecting husband, Brian Douglas Caldwell.
In May 1999, a judge had legally declared 50-year-old Brian Caldwell mentally incompetent and named his wife as his legal guardian.
As authorities investigated the three sniper-style killings near Kanawha County convenience stores in August 2003, they discovered Brian Caldwell’s collection of 55 guns and 47,000 rounds.
He pleaded guilty to illegal possession of a firearm and lying on a federal form required for gun purchases in 2005 and was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison. He is incarcerated in a federal facility in Glenville and is scheduled to be released in October 2009.
As investigators tried to link Brian Caldwell to the shootings, they learned that Sharon Caldwell, a former employee of the Kanawha County Board of Education, bought guns for him.
Sharon Caldwell certainly knew that her husband had been deemed mentally incompetent, but she didn’t know she was breaking the law by buying him guns, defense attorney Tim Carrico said during Thursday’s hearing.
“She had no idea” that her husband was legally barred from possessing guns, Carrico said. “She never thought she did anything wrong.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lisa Johnston pointed out that Sharon Caldwell bought the first gun less than a month after the circuit court proceeding.
“The defendant in this case, more than anyone else, knew how dangerous her husband was,” Johnston said.
Sharon Caldwell apologized to the court and her family before U.S. District Judge Jon T. Copenhaver Jr. imposed his sentence.
“I have made a grave mistake,” she said. “There was never any intent to harm anyone or disrupt my family.”
Federal sentencing guidelines suggested a prison term of 18 to 24 months. Copenhaver said he took into account her steady work history and lack of a previous criminal record.
In addition, the recommended sentence was longer because Caldwell bought her husband more than eight guns, Copenhaver said.
“It is not of great significance in this case that there were nine firearms instead of seven,” he said.
Copenhaver also fined her $3,000 and ordered her to self-report to prison by Jan. 25.
After the hearing, Special Agent Craig Roegner, public information officer with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ Louisville office, said that West Virginia is one of 18 states that does not automatically supply information on residents barred from owning guns to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.
“There is an epidemic in this country of gun violence,” Roegner said after the hearing, because people with mental illnesses are using guns to kill people. “We’ve seen it at malls, schools, houses of worship.”
On Wednesday, Congress passed the NICS Improvement Amendment Act, which offers states strong incentives to provide information that will keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.
The legislation now goes to President Bush, who can sign it into law.
Roegner said Sharon Caldwell bought the first gun, a Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum revolver, on her husband’s birthday.
“[He had] more firepower than most police departments in West Virginia have,” Roegner said. “He had an arsenal.”
In addition to the revolver, Sharon Caldwell bought four rifles and four pistols for her husband.
The ability for mentally ill people to buy guns has been under heightened scrutiny in the wake of April’s shootings at Virginia Tech. The gunman, Seung Hui Cho, was able to buy two semi-automatic guns after a court ruling declared he was a threat to himself.
