ATF Rains Down on Louisville Black Market Gun Dealers

Yes, gun control is unconstitutional.

However, if we’re going to have it, it needs to focus on criminals, not the law-abiding folks like you and me. The days of trying to jam up every gun dealer in America are over, at least for now, and violence is down across the board, all in spite of the post-Bruen fearmongering. However, there’s still plenty of work to be done.

And that should be directed at criminals, which is precisely what the ATF just did in Louisville.

Following an approximately two-month-long, ATF-led operation involving multiple state and federal agencies, dozens of defendants were recently arrested on federal and state charges. In addition, significant amounts of narcotics and numbers of firearms were seized and taken off the streets of Louisville.

U.S. Attorney Kyle G. Bumgarner of the Western District of Kentucky, Jefferson County Commonwealth’s Attorney Gerina D. Whethers, Special Agent in Charge John Nokes of the ATF Louisville Field Division, Special Agent in Charge Jim Scott of the DEA Louisville Field Division, Chief Paul L. Humphrey of the Louisville Metro Police Department, and U.S. Marshal Gary B. Burman of the of the U.S. Marshal Service for the Western District of Kentucky made the announcement. 

This summer, Louisville ATF led a violent crime reduction initiative in Louisville. The Louisville ATF-led operation was in partnership with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Kentucky, the Jefferson County Commonwealth Attorney’s Office, the Louisville Metro Police Department, the Louisville DEA Field Division, the Louisville United States Marshal Service for the Western District of Kentucky, the Kentucky Attorney General’s Office, the Kentucky State Police, the Jeffersontown Police Department, the Shively Police Department, the Louisville Metro Department of Corrections and the Oldham County Department of Corrections.

The initiative focused on targeting gun traffickers who are selling guns to gang members and violent criminals and who also dispose of weapons used in violent crimes. The initiative also focused on drug traffickers working in neighborhoods with high violent crime rates. 

A novel approach, based on what we’ve seen over the last handful of years.

It seems like all too often the ATF goes after sailors who don’t own a single illegal firearm or your average household pet like, say, a dog. They go after airport executives who sell off parts of their collection and raid his house at a time when he’s likely to think home invasion, all so he can be shot.

You know, hypotheticals like that. I’m sure nothing like any of that ever happened, but I’ll ponder it while I feed my pet unicorn.

Seriously, those are not the people the ATF should be looking at, and I’m glad to see those weren’t the targets in Louisville. 

How did this work out? Well, not bad.

This summer initiative was wildly successful. The initiative resulted in 43 federal indictments and 10 state indictments. Nearly 50 defendants were arrested as part of this initiative. Collectively, the defendants charged have well over 200 prior felony convictions, including multiple prior homicide convictions. Many of the charged defendants also have gang affiliations. The initiative seized 160 firearms from Louisville’s streets, including 42 machine-gun conversion devices which serve to convert a semi-automatic handgun into a machine-gun. This initiative also seized 10 kilograms of illegal drugs, primarily including significant amounts of fentanyl and methamphetamine. Tragically, fentanyl and methamphetamine lead to death and destruction of individual lives and destroy communities.   

Wait, you mean the people who had guns illegally also had other illegal stuff? That there’s an overlap between the illicit drug trade and the illicit gun trade?

I’m shocked. 

Now, the defendants here average about four felonies each, some of which were probably part of the same incident. Still, these are not law-abiding folks, yet they were knee-deep in the illicit gun trade. 160 firearms and 42 full-auto switches were recovered, which isn’t a particularly small operation. I’m curious if they marketed the switches on Instagram.

Will it make a difference?

Probably not. There are a lot of indictments, sure, and most of those will lead to convictions, I’m sure. But Louisville has about 650,000 people. I’m not sure that “nearly 50” is going to be a big enough hole to create issues. Sure, it’s only a small percentage of any community that does these kinds of things, but the bigger the community, the bigger that percentage is in raw numbers.

Still, it’s nice to see the focus of the ATF being somewhere other than the average American.

Editor’s Note: President Trump and Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.

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