On Monday, I dropped a report that revealed the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s embarrassing scandal surrounding its former star counterintelligence agent Charles McGonigal, who’s been indicted on corruption-related federal charges, is much worse than the Department of Justice and the media have admitted.
While McGonigal was still serving as a senior FBI official in 2017 he became a partner of Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama and his ruling Socialist Party. In that capacity, McGonigal is believed to have extorted wealthy Albanians in a sort of protection racket where the bureau bigwig promised to protect the oligarchs from U.S. sanctions in exchange for big bribes. McGonigal’s haul from this was on the order of $32 million (which was presumably shared with his partners). I also reported that McGonigal shook down Shefqet Kastrati, Albania’s top oil magnate, for 12 million euros, nearly $15 million, in 2017.
Kastrati’s representatives subsequently contacted the Washington Examiner to adamantly deny that allegation. But although the FBI’s embarrassing scandal was ignored by much of the U.S. media, it ignited a firestorm in Albania. There, McGonigal’s apparent mafia-like antics in collusion with the government in Tirana have been front-page news.
Accusations continue to mount that McGonigal was shaking down rich Balkan businesspeople, employing his FBI affiliation in the furtherance of his con. Albanian media also reported that McGonigal, in collusion with Rama and his associates, shook down Kastrati for as much as 15 million euros to keep the oil magnate in the good graces of the Department of State in Washington. This included the involvement of Agron Neza, the former Albanian intelligence operative and McGonigal partner who accompanied the FBI man on trips to Albania and was reportedly “a regular visitor to Kastrati’s office” and an intermediary who “passed bags of money” to McGonigal.
There are also reports that Rama allies, such as Tirana mayor Erion Veliaj, paid McGonigal some 8 million euros to have a political rival, Ylli Ndroqi, declared non grata by Washington. A frequent critic of the Rama government, Ndroqi had his media empire seized by the ruling socialists in 2020 amid allegations of drug trafficking and money laundering — which are the same things the Rama government is widely alleged to be involved in.
Charles McGonigal, former special agent in charge of the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York.
(AP Photo/John Minchillo)
Now comes another Albanian media report of McGonigal’s shakedown operation, in this case involving the oligarch Pellumb Salillari, one of Albania’s “big octopuses of corruption.” Salillari is alleged to have paid McGonigal 5 million euros to improve his reputation in Washington, where he was assessed to have criminal connections. This, then, was another big bribe to purchase McGonigal’s protection from his own government.
My Monday column reported that McGonigal attempted similar shakedown operations in neighboring countries among ethnic Albanians, and that, too, has been stated by the local media. Next door, in Kosovo, there are reports that, through an intermediary with the help of Agron Neza, McGonigal scared local businessmen with the threat of being on Washington’s “blacklist” — which the FBI official could save them from for the right fee.
As the report claims: “They had original letters from the FBI guy, from McGonigal; they just changed the names on them and used them to tell people that they would be blacklisted by the U.S. and if they paid it could be banned.”
The scam was audacious: “[McGonigal] had access to the original files used in the blacklist of Russians from the U.S., they took them and changed the names with Albanian names … the FBI guy in Tirana, his partners, had papers that looked legit, the FBI logo, that they would present to businessmen around town who might be suspected of doing things that could get into blacklist from us. They would then set up a meeting with the FBI guy, usually in Vienna, where the frightened businessmen would be encouraged to pay the partners 1 to 5 million.”
This claim cannot be verified but I can attest that the scam — showing rich Albanians doctored FBI sanctions paperwork with their names right on them — is the same modus operandi which Albanian sources told me that McGonigal and his network attempted to blackmail them with. Note that the Kosovo allegation alleges the involvement of the FBI’s legal attache office in Tirana, which, if true, means that the bureau’s corruption problem is about more than McGonigal.
We now have multiple reports telling the same story: Charles McGonigal, while still serving with the FBI, indeed as one of its top officials, was shaking down Balkan businesspeople for millions of dollars in partnership with dirty local politicians. These accusations are either true or false. Since McGonigal has already been indicted by DOJ for corruption, it’s not difficult to believe he perpetrated even more of it than he stands accused of in court.
Congress must ask questions soon since McGonigal’s corruption may have infected more FBI officials than just himself.
As an FBI agent, I was fortunate to be “loaned” to the DEA for three years in a training capacity. My tactical training and survival unit was supervised and populated by some of the finest agents I’ve ever known. Three of its members, Chuck Franklin, Victor Cortez and Frank White were legends.
NOT INVENTED HERE SYNDROME
The Bureau’s Firearms Training Unit (FTU) consisted of many talented and dedicated agents, but was plagued with a stagnating attitude of the “not invented here syndrome.” They were reluctant to even consider outside ideas especially from the private weapons training sector. Fortunately the DEA believed in training and frequently sought knowledge outside of the organization, resulting in the discovery of a lot of good ideas out there. As a result, DEA’s tactical and firearm’s programs were enriched and moved into the 21st century.
WHERE THE ACTION IS
As a Marine returning from Vietnam, a veteran federal investigator told me, “If you want action on regular basis, join DEA. They get into more gun battles with desperate dopers than any other agency and they have some of the toughest agents in the business. They kick butt all over the world.”
After two infantry tours and an extended advisory billet in SE Asia I wasn’t interested in more run and gun. After becoming an FBI agent instead, I discovered the DEA admonition was true. It’s even reflected in the differences for new agent Academy dress. DEA candidates dress like Darth Vader, with black BDU trousers, black combat boots and gray golf shirts. FBI agents look like models for the Lands End catalog. The NARCO hunters approach training with a military mindset.
Students double time everywhere and stand when an instructor enters the classroom. They’re told it’s not a question of if, but only when you will exchange rounds in anger with a criminal — some within weeks of a field office assignment. — Fiftyone federal agents have been killed in the line of duty.
INTERNATIONAL BATTLES AND TERRORISM
DEA Unit Chief Frank White, a Silver Star awarded air-borne veteran of Vietnam, had six gun battles to his credit be-fore arriving at Quantico. He also took over Operation Snow-cap, which sent Special Operations trained DEA agents to fight cocaine production and shipment in Latin America.
DEA agents are also wearing body armor, helmets and carrying assault rifles into the jungles of SE Asia and poppy fields of Afghanistan to take America’s war on drugs to the sources of production. Drugs and terrorism go hand in hand and DEA is intimately involved in fighting entities financing logistics and operations through drug sales. DEA agents have developed some of our most outstanding counter terrorism informants.
THE DATA
I thought it might be interesting to compare DEA’s stats with NYPD’s experiences in 2005. In 2005, NYPD had 35,000 members. While some may accuse me of comparing apples to oranges, I thought it would be an engaging exercise if only for academic purposes.
TIME OF WEEK
As the week ends, Thursday saw the most shootings for DEA with 13 and Sunday was a close second with 12. So much for those critics that claim government workers shut down for the weekend. Friday was third with 10 incidents. Compared to NYPD with 123 incidents in 2005, Saturday was their most active with 24 occurrences.
TIME OF YEAR
The beginning of colder weather ushered in the majority of armed encounters with September accounting for ten gun-fights followed by eight in May. December grabbed the three spot with only six. Obviously, in some parts of the world where these battles took place our winter is their summer.
NYPD experienced 16 shootings in October and July was next with 13.
TIME OF DAY/NIGHT
The vast majority of the gunplay, or 42 engagements, occurred during the day while the remainder took place at night. While most peoples’ work day was ending, DEA was just getting started and managed to contact violent suspects 17 times between 1601 and 2000 hrs. From there on to midnight, another 11 were accommodated, but 0801 to 1200 actually garnered second spot with 12. The Big Apple’s finest got most of their trigger time on the graveyard shift from 0400 to midnight with 38.
INVOLVED WEAPONRY
Handguns dominated as the agents’ weapon of choice during emergency response in 49 incidents. The 5.56x45mm rifle or carbine over-shadowed the 9mm sub guns in 26 and six incidents respectively. Shotguns still enjoy life in the DEA and were broken out for six engagements.
However, long guns were used to fire more rounds in anger than handguns with 176 versus 157 respectively. Sub guns came in a distant third with 64 directed at hostiles and shotguns launched the contents of 16 shells at suspects war-ranting deadly force.
NYPD used pistols in 156 conflicts, revolvers in 4, and submachine guns and shotguns in one each.
BAD GUYS ARMAMENT
Conversely, the bad guys opted for pistols or revolvers and peppered the LEOs with 11 rounds, followed by some type of rifle/carbine with seven shots and shotguns accounting for four.
MAN’S BEST FRIEND?
Dogs figure prominently in these confrontations and when I was working with the DEA, 25 percent of the shootings involved K-9s. In 2007 there were 31 encounters with dogs and 75 shots were fired. Three years ago, NYPD officers fired 93 rounds at the land sharks.
DREADED SEARCH WARRANT
DEA still encounters most of their resistance during the execution of search warrants followed by arrest situations with 25 and 10 discharges respectively.
CARELESS GUN HANDLING
Unintentional discharges reflect poorly on the weapons discipline of any agency. Unfortunately, they are the second most prevalent cause of weapons firings in DEA — noting an increase from 2006 to 2007 by a factor of five. DEA agents caused eight, and four were attributed to other personnel for a total of 12. Ten handguns and two rifles were involved.
Most occurred during care and cleaning and unloading procedures prior to firearms storage. Eight involved Glocks and one each with a Colt Commander and Smith and Wesson revolver. NYPD had 25 “accidental discharges.”
MOBILE WEAPON
Vehicles were used by suspects in 10 assaults and the majority occurred during buy/bust ops. Deadly force was employed primarily in cases where the suspects were able to defeat the attempted vehicle containment techniques.
LESSONS LEARNED
We shoot at people not cars. The car may be the target, but the person operating it is the X – ring. With the small arms available to law enforcement, the automobile is a virtual armored vehicle and the suspect enjoys a substantial amount of projection. Except for bonded ammunition, 5.56x45mm is not effective on auto glass and steel.
A fleeting target, vehicle glass must be compromised first before rounds can be effective against suspects. The only time the Israeli police use full automatic fire from shoulder weapons is when they encounter a hostile moving vehicle.
Gather intelligence and plan ahead for K-9 avoidance and or humane neutralization. Use non-lethal means if possible. Firing at a relatively small, rapidly moving and highly determined threat invites potential fratricide.
No matter how experienced you are, no one is above safety and safe weapons handling. Treat all guns as if they are loaded all the time. Check and recheck and keep your finger off the trigger unless you are preparing to fire. Always keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction or in the direction that it will do the least amount of dam-age should it go off. Never dry fire in the office and never dry fire when live ammunition is present.
Search warrants are particularly dangerous, because the fruits of the crime must be seized to make the case or culminate in an arrest. As a result, speed is often essential after the element of surprise is derogated. Speed can sacrifice control and lead to tactical mistakes that are advantageous for your adversary. Instead, try to gather enough evidence by other means and serve an arrest warrant in-stead. Careful. Hurry.
I personally think girls are the greatest of all God’s many manifestly amazing creations. Sadly, Marc Lépine felt otherwise.
Some may take umbrage with my assertion, but I would propose that the human female is the most complex organism in the known universe. Stealth bombers, robot Mars rovers, and quantum computers don’t even come close. After a literal lifetime of study I can honestly say that I have no idea what makes girls tick. I am deeply thankful for the fairer half of the human population, but I will never consider myself an expert in the field of female relations. My wife would likely rate me a solid marginal. I think I should get an “A” for effort.
Marc Lépine, shown here alongside his younger sister, was dealt a fairly sordid hand in life.
Despite whatever challenges I might have interacting with women, Marc Lépine was far worse. Born in 1964 as Gamil Rodrigue Liass Gharbi in Montreal, Quebec, Marc was the son of an Algerian immigrant named Rachid Liass Gharbi and Canadian nurse Monique Lépine. He had one younger sister named Nadia. For a variety of very good reasons, Marc had daddy issues.
This is Monique Lépine. Her son was a monster.
Monique was a former Catholic nun who rejected all religion after leaving the convent. Rachid was a non-pious Muslim. Mom later described Marc as “a confirmed atheist all his life.” Rachid started running around on Monique while on business trips, and things spiraled from there.
Marc Lépine just never seemed to get a break.
Rachid was a vile, violent, overbearing man who physically abused both his wife and his kids. He and Monique divorced, but things didn’t get much better. Rachid defaulted on his mortgage, and the family lost their home and most of their possessions. When he came of age Gamil Rodrigue Liass Gharbi changed his named to Marc Lépine to spite his reprobate father.
Marc Lépine’s upbringing was hard and chaotic.
In his youth, Marc was described as reserved, quiet, and uncommunicative. His sister Nadia mocked him mercilessly in public over both his acne and his inability to secure a girlfriend. This precipitated a deep-seeded hatred. Marc once dug a faux grave for her in the backyard of the house where they were staying. He was thrilled when she was remanded to a group home for drug abuse and chronic delinquency. Nadia died of a cocaine overdose in 1996 at age 28.
Early on Marc Lépine vented his frustrations on the local pigeon population.
To make things worse, there were rumors that Marc might have been molested as part of a Big Brother after-school program. Along the way he acquired an air rifle and slaughtered pigeons wholesale in the neighborhood where he lived. He developed a fascination with World War 2 and openly praised Adolf Hitler. In 1981 at age 17 Marc applied for a position as an officer cadet in the Canadian military but was rejected. A subsequent statement from the Canadian Army explained that he was “interviewed, assessed, and found to be unsuitable.”
Behold the face of evil.
So here we have a kid with some suboptimal raw material raised in some of the most ghastly conditions imaginable. He hated his family and distrusted most everybody else. All the male figures in his life were beastly animals, while the women were abusive and distant. This was the perfect milieu to precipitate Something Truly Horrible.
The Setting
École Polytechnique was the site of an epically horrible mass shooting.
Bless his heart, Marc tried to make something of himself. He attended a variety of technical schools wherein his academic performance ranged from exemplary to absent with everything in between. By the late 1980’s he had set his sights on École Polytechnique, a respected engineering school in Montreal.
For reasons known only to him, images like this just sent Marc Lépine over the edge.
Marc had to complete a couple of classes to qualify for admission, and he pursued these prerequisites in fits and starts. During a 1989 meeting with an admissions officer, Marc complained that women were taking over the job market, displacing men from their more traditional roles. He was particularly bitter about female engineers and police officers. Somewhere along the way, Marc Lépine just snapped.
The Ruger Mini-14 was Lépine’s weapon of choice.
Lépine planned his vengeance over a period of months. In August of 1989 he made formal application for a permit to purchase a Ruger Mini-14 semiautomatic rifle. His application was approved in October of that year. He actually purchased the gun on November 21, 1989, from a local sporting goods store. This should address any lingering doubts you might have had concerning the effectiveness of waiting periods.
The Shootings
Marc Lépine was a self-described anti-feminist. Of all the dark twisted causes around which to wrap one’s dysfunctional life, this one strikes me as stranger than most.
On December 6, 1989, Marc Lépine walked into a second-floor classroom of the École Polytechnique with his Mini-14. He methodically segregated the men from the women and directed the roughly fifty male students to leave. Once he had thusly winnowed the crowd he opened fire, killing six women and wounding the rest. Before leaving the room to continue his rampage he took a moment to scrawl a scatological reference across one of the female student’s project depicting his displeasure with its quality.
Marc Lépine focused his rage on the entire female population. In the sordid aftermath of the attack, several survivors have also taken their own lives. In two cases, their final thoughts attributed their own suicides to survivor’s guilt over this horrible attack.
Lépine then went mobile, wandering the halls, classrooms, and cafeteria shooting mostly women but a few men as well. His 14th and final victim was wounded and cried out for help. In response, Lépine stabbed her to death with his hunting knife before turning the rifle on himself. The entire ghastly attack spanned some twenty minutes. In addition to the fifteen dead, there were another fourteen who were badly injured. Lépine was 25 at the time.
The Suicide Letter
Humans have a weird compulsion to capture their final thoughts on paper prior to self destruction. Those of Marc Lépine were fairly nonsensical.
Lépine left behind a suicide note written in French. Here are a few excerpts drawn from the translation—
Forgive the mistakes, I had 15 minutes to write this. See also Annex.
Please note that if I commit suicide today 89-12-06 it is not for economic reasons (for I have waited until I exhausted all my financial means, even refusing jobs) but for political reasons. Because I have decided to send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, to their Maker…I tried in my youth to enter the Forces as an officer cadet, which would have allowed me possibly to get into the arsenal…They refused me because asocial [sic]. I therefore had to wait until this day to execute my plans. In between, I continued my studies in a haphazard way for they never really interested me, knowing in advance my fate…Even if the Mad Killer epithet will be attributed to me by the media, I consider myself a rational erudite that only the arrival of the Grim Reaper has forced to take extreme acts…Being rather backward-looking by nature (except for science), the feminists have always enraged me. They want to keep the advantages of women (e.g. cheaper insurance, extended maternity leave preceded by a preventative leave, etc.) while seizing for themselves those of men.
Thus it is an obvious truth that if the Olympic Games removed the Men-Women distinction, there would be women only in the graceful events. So the feminists are not fighting to remove that barrier. They are so opportunistic they [do not] neglect to profit from the knowledge accumulated by men through the ages. They always try to misrepresent them every time they can. Thus, the other day, I heard they were honoring the Canadian men and women who fought at the frontline during the world wars. How can you explain [that since] women were not authorized to go to the frontline??? Will we hear of Caesar’s female legions and female galley slaves who of course took up 50% of the ranks of history, though they never existed. A real Casus Belli.
Sorry for this too brief letter.
Marc Lépine
It’s Will again now–Wow. That guy was a piece of work.
The Gun
The similarities between the Mini-14 and its larger .30-caliber brother are obvious.
The Ruger Mini-14 was developed by James Sullivan, one of the original designers of the AR15, and Bill Ruger. Introduced in 1973, the Mini-14 was a scaled-down .223 version of the M14 battle rifle. While the two weapons are intentionally similar externally, their operating systems remain quite different.
The Ruger Mini-14 is one of the most highly customized weapons ever built.
The Mini-14 is offered in a variety of configurations in both stainless and blued finishes. This gas-operated rifle feeds from detachable box magazines and could be had from the factory with both fixed and folding stocks. The Mini-14 is one of the most widely accessorized firearms ever produced, and it remains in production today. In the hands of sensible folk it is a reliable utility tool.
The Aftermath
Poverty does a lot of bad things, but it doesn’t automatically make you a psychopath.
Psychiatrists have pored over the details of Lépine’s case, attributing his psychopathy to a broad spectrum of influences ranging from genetic to political. They affixed a variety of psychiatric diagnoses to the man in retrospect. Some of the labels include personality disorders, “extreme narcissistic vulnerability,” and fantasies of power combined with excessive self-criticism. It has been postulated that he had suffered brain damage at some point. Some delusional commentator even claimed that Lépine’s egregious behavior was simply the result of having been raised in poverty. Were that the case you would expect places like Burundi and Niger to be populated solely by serial killers.
Gun control via legislative fiat is a fool’s errand in Information Age America. With some 440 million weapons already in circulation, that ship has sailed.
There are 440 million firearms in America. Marc Lépine invested four months obtaining his gun through legal channels. In modern-day America it is not humanly possible to prevent monsters like this guy from obtaining the tools they want to commit their heinous crimes.
You really don’t have to look very far to find a good reason to pack a gun these days.
I don’t carry a gun every day because I am paranoid or insecure. I carry a gun because my family and I share the planet with homicidal lunatics like Marc Lépine. If you feel differently then good for you. Do whatever you want, just leave me alone to make my own choices. There was exactly one thing that could have stopped Marc Lépine on that horrible day in 1989, and it wasn’t some ill-conceived piece of feel-good legislation. It was a good guy with a gun.
Being a cop provides you with a front row seat to the greatest show on earth. However, exposure to life’s rawest theater comes with consequences. Your head will shake while your jaw drops as society’s worst actors reinforce the idea evil is real. You’ll see strange, twisted behavior that never crossed your mind.
After decades of witnessing these acts, your sense of humor gets twisted too. Over time the incidents lose their shock appeal. As a matter of fact, nothing surprises you anymore, a sign of saltiness. Amongst the ranks, an “Old Salt” is an endearing term for those veteran officers who’ve seen it all.
Laugh Or Cry?
Humor makes most things tolerable. Twisted humor is the mechanism cops use to make serious situations more bearable by making light of life’s ugly events. The ability to pluck strands of wit, or bemusement from grisly occurrences is a release valve for stress.
Gallows humor allows cops to function, preserving their sanity. I always surrounded myself with fellow cops who kept the mood light and airy, until it was time to put on our game face. No sense being stressed or weepy, there’s more than enough to go around. These traits follow cops into retirement too — you know evil exists and your sense of humor is warped.
Here’s Tank checking out some guns. There is a common
vulgar description for this kind of grin!
Peace Packers
Most retired cops are always armed. They’d all shield their loved ones from danger without hesitation. Most would, for total strangers. When going out, old cops are alert, looking for trouble. Not to confront, but to avoid. They don’t need confrontation.
First rule of survival is being armed, second is to avoid using force, sidestepping confrontations. Retirees have no powers of arrest. Their gun can only be used for protection from great bodily harm or death of themselves or others. This is why retired cops are happy staying home or visiting with known, trusted friends.
Home On the Range
On the home front, the best example of being prepared can be explained by introducing my friend Phil. A cop’s cop, retiring years ago, Phil was a Trooper, K9 handler, SWAT team member and finally Firearms Instructor. No Marvin Milquetoast, Phil is all Trooper. He cleaned things up by locking up bad guys. Simple formula, eh?
Most cops desire seclusion at home, dreaming of living on top of a mountain or out in the middle of nowhere, having a long line of sight. Phil did just that, building his house on top of the highest point of his 67-acre property. His driveway is about a half-mile, complete with motion sensors. Yeah, plural!
Having 90 seconds to “get ready” when alerted, he grabs his trusty Walmart Greeter, a shortened double-barreled shotgun. Carried along his leg, it’s unnoticeable, as he steps onto his deck, peering out, waiting. If known, he returns the greeter, if not, it stays by his side.
Inside, Phil’s La-Z-Boy chair has a .38 snubby within reach. He also has a 6″ S&W model 28 Highway Patrolman tucked away to answer any trouble. He’s rehearsed scenarios with his wife, should a home invader make the mistake of entering, involving his Colt 1911.
Does he sound paranoid? Phil simply says, “I’m too old to fight and too young to die!” Is it paranoia if you know people are willing to hurt you for your belongings? Most cops believe it’s better to have and not need, being prepared for the worst, while hoping for the best.
Chicken wings and baked beans in the smoker.
Humor Me
Phil’s over 75, sharp as a tack, and has a great sense of humor. I constantly get several funny emails from him, some needing to be opened privately. He shares them to keep things light and airy. But rest assured, when it’s time to put on his game face and take care of business, Phil is ready. We meet regularly for breakfast, both always armed, always cheerful, always happy, always prepared. You’d never know it
Here’s the chow tent! First class all the way!
Shootout
Phil loves life, America, friends and guns. He hosts a Shootout every spring for his closest friends to shoot, eat a catered breakfast and lunch, catch up, have some laughs and enjoy life. What else is there? Be smart, stay safe, have fun and laugh when you can. Be prepared for the worst while enjoying the best life has to offer. Be an “Old Salt” and think like Phil! Have fun while being safe.
If movies are to be believed (they shouldn’t), then every street corner youth gang is tearing about the neighborhood armed with state of the art military weaponry. Reality is that actual criminal use of machineguns in America is and always has been vanishingly rare.
If you shape your worldview at the local cineplex, and, distressingly, many do, then you might expect gangs of bank robbers wielding full auto HK G36 assault rifles to be lurking behind every parking meter in whatever little metropolis you call home. However, I have it on reliable information that movies are not technically real. The reality, by contrast, paints a very different picture.
Rare professional criminals like John Dillinger with his Thompson and Clyde Barrow with his BAR had an outsized influence on American culture.
Automatic weapons (not to be confused with “semiautomatic assault weapons,” whatever they actually are) have been heavily regulated in the United States since 1934. Thompson submachine guns and Browning Automatic Rifles were really the only automatic weapons in circulation back then, and they were used precious few times in actual crimes. However, then as now blood and sex sell newspapers, so the public became convinced that machinegun-related crime was an existential threat to our American way of life.
The Constitution is actually fairly specific about the limited powers granted to the US Congress.
As a result, legislators did what legislators do. Interestingly, back in 1934 lawmakers actually read the document they were sworn to support and defend. They appreciated that they lacked the constitutional power to ban anything. What they subsequently did was to simply tax machineguns out of existence. As $200 in 1934 is about $3,000 today, levying a $200 tax on the transfer of machineguns effectively shut down commerce in these items.
Transferable machineguns are now insanely expensive. This cherry example of a Colt M16A1 is listed at $28k.
Now fast forward to the 1980s and $200 was not the lofty sum it once was. Private ownership of automatic weapons, therefore, began to accumulate a proper following. In 1986 a Democratically-controlled congress slipped the Hughes Amendment into the ironically-titled Firearms Owners Protection Act. President Reagan daftly signed the thing, and the new production of automatic weapons for sale to civilians was gone never to return. Resulting market forces pushed prices of transferable automatic weapons into the stratosphere. The M16 I bought for $600 in 1987 would cost twenty grand to replace today.
There was a time in America when legal machineguns were both plentiful and cheap.
As of 2016, the BATF reported that there were 175,977 transferable automatic weapons in the National Firearms Registry and Transfer Record. A few of these guns are still in Law Enforcement arms rooms or museums, but most of them are owned by folks like us. Since 1934 there have been two cases wherein the legal owner of a registered machinegun committed a crime with his weapon. Only one is well documented.
The Shooter
Officer Roger Waller ran a gun shop, served with the Dayton Police Department, and was a fixture among the local paintball set.
In 1988 Roger Waller was a thirteen-year veteran of the Dayton, Ohio, police department. He also owned a gun shop and was active in paintball. His Law Enforcement job was to manage the Drug Hotline Volunteer Program. His duties included training and scheduling volunteers to man a telephone hotline wherein local citizens could call in tips about suspected drug dealers. Officer Waller would correlate the information and occasionally travel to the locations reported to observe for evidence of trafficking.
The war on drugs has cost billions of dollars and thousands of lives.
If Officer Waller saw something suspicious his mandate was to report it for further investigation. Waller was not to speak with anyone at these locations or attempt to buy drugs. Though he carried a 9mm handgun, Officer Waller’s duties were administrative in nature.
Wow, Just Wow
This sordid episode began with the installation of a new furnace in a police officer’s home.
On September 15th 1988, Officer Waller was spending his day off having a new furnace installed by an HVAC specialist named Dennis Michael. Waller told Michael that he was a police officer who investigated drug dealers. Michael informed Waller that there was a house in his neighborhood that he suspected of harboring drug activity. Once the furnace was installed Waller and Michael drove to Michael’s neighborhood for a look-see.
For whatever reason, Officer Waller was packing his legally-registered MAC-11 submachine gun on the day he and a buddy embarked on his little off-duty counter-drug operation.
Despite being off duty, Waller carried his 9mm service pistol and badge along with his legally registered .380ACP MAC-11 submachine gun in a shoulder holster. His new buddy the furnace installer also brought along a shotgun. Once Michael identified the dwelling the two men kept it under surveillance for about half an hour. Observing nothing out of the ordinary Officer Waller announced that he had “decided to go down and try to make a buy at the door.”
Officer Waller identified himself as Law Enforcement as he approached the suspected drug dealer’s home.
As he approached the home a young girl emerged. Waller flashed his badge and advised her to leave as he “was going to bust this house.” Waller then walked to the screen door and addressed the two men inside.
Crack cocaine was a scourge across the country in the 1980s.
Lawrence Eugene Hileman and Jerry L. Smith were inside the home. When Officer Waller announced that he was there to buy crack cocaine Hileman and Smith laughed. They then invited Waller and Michael inside stating that they didn’t sell crack cocaine. Waller and Michael entered the house and Waller identified himself as “drug enforcement.” Officer Waller then announced, “You know, somebody is going to go to jail here if we don’t find out where the drugs are.”
At close range, the MAC-series submachine guns are undeniably effective.
The details are fuzzy, but at this point apparently something bad happened. Officer Waller shot Hileman in the chest with a long burst from his submachine gun. Waller later claimed it was an accident, but I read that the guy was hit thirty times. Dennis Michael, the furnace repairman, then shot Jerry Smith twice with his shotgun. Hileman died in short order. Smith was grievously wounded.
The Gun
Gordon Ingram (center) mastered the art of combining modern mass-production techniques with a simple and reliable submachine gun design.
Gordon Ingram was born in California in 1924. A World War 2 veteran, he returned home from the war and began the design of his first submachine gun.
The M6 was Gordon Ingram’s first successful SMG.
The result, the Ingram Model 6, was a .45ACP weapon built around a tubular receiver. The Model 6 was designed as an inexpensive replacement for the Thompson that was both heavy and spendy to produce. The Model 6 was available with either a horizontal or vertical foregrip and included a novel fire selector in the trigger, not unlike that of the Steyr AUG. A short pull produced semiauto fire, while a long pull produced full auto. Alas, in 1949 the world was awash in submachine guns, so after a run of 20,000 copies, the Model 6 died a natural death.
The M10 was Gordon Ingram’s most popular design. This one is chambered for 9mm Parabellum.
In 1964 Ingram designed his masterpiece. The M10 submachine gun was available in either 9mm or .45ACP chamberings and was produced predominantly via steel stampings. These guns were less than a foot long with their flimsy wire stocks retracted and weighed 6.26 pounds. However, the M10’s diminutive dimensions produced an abbreviated bolt travel and subsequent breathtaking rate of fire in excess of 1,000 rpm.
Mitch WerBell III was an undeniably larger than life character.
In 1969 Ingram joined SIONICS, an American arms-producing company founded by the flamboyant former OSS/CIA officer Mitch Werbell III.
The M10 was designed from the outset to be used with a sound suppressor.
SIONICS stood for “Studies in the Operational Negation of Insurgents and Counter-Subversion.” This has got to be the coolest acronym ever contrived by man.
WerBell’s innovative two-stage suppressor design actually used tennis shoe eyelets in the first stage to help mitigate the gun’s racket.
Ingram joined his tiny subgun to a novel two-stage sound suppressor designed by WerBell and proceeded to try to sell the combination to everybody in the free world.
The .380ACP M11 (right) is a scaled-down version of the larger 9mm M10.
In 1972 Ingram and WerBell, now under the mantle of the Military Armaments Corporation (MAC, the second coolest acronym in human history) released the M11. This was a scaled-down version of the M10 chambered in .380ACP. The M11 was not much larger than a 1911 pistol and weighed a paltry 3.5 pounds. This spunky little bullet hose cycled at between 1,200 and 1,600 rpm and fed from either 16 or 32-round magazines. This was the weapon Officer Waller used to kill the unfortunate Mr. Hileman. Though both guns are frequently referred to as either the MAC-10 or MAC-11, this designation was never formally endorsed by the company.
How Do They Run?
The tiny little 9mm M10 actually weighs about as much as an M16A1 rifle.
The M10 weighs almost as much as an M16A1, but it is undeniably compact. With a sound suppressor installed and the stock extended I can keep my bursts from a 9mm M10 inside a paper plate at fifteen meters. Without the can and with the stock collapsed the gun looks undeniably cool but becomes an area weapon system.
The .380ACP M11 isn’t much larger than a 1911 pistol.
The M11 is more controllable, though trigger discipline becomes an even greater issue given the profligate rate of fire. You can actually hold a tuned M11 sideways at head height, squeeze the trigger, and empty the gun before the first case hits the ground. That’s a dandy parlor trick but doesn’t have much practical application. Great care must be exercised with both guns in the absence of a sound suppressor to avoid the errant inadvertent defingering.
The Rest of the Story
WerBell and Ingram tried to sell their little submachine guns to the US Army as a replacement for the 1911 pistol.
Ingram and WerBell wanted desperately to convince Uncle Sam to replace all of his 1911 pistols with MAC submachine guns. The mind boggles at the number of shot-off digits that might litter military firing ranges today had they been successful. As it was they did sell a smattering around the globe at about $120 apiece back in the seventies but eventually gave up and quit. Semiauto variants of Ingram’s guns are still in production today.
MAC submachine guns are designed for just such close-range across-the-room engagements. John Wayne debuted the diminutive little gun in his 1970’s cop thriller McQ. Mind that trigger finger, Duke.
Officer Waller and his furnace-installing civilian deputy Dennis Michael both pled guilty and were sentenced to eighteen years in prison. The deceased Mr. Hileman had served as a past police drug informant and was indeed apparently a pretty vile guy. There were even rumors that Waller had killed him intentionally, perhaps as a contract hit. The details are lost to time.
Converting semiauto weapons to full auto was legal in America before 1986. The tools required for such an enterprise are fairly simple.
Prior to 1986, anybody with $200 and a Dremel tool could file a BATF Form 1 and legally build a machinegun in their basement. 175,977 machineguns ended up in private hands under this system. With the exception of Officer Waller and one other guy, in 86 years nobody criminally misused any of those weapons.
The MAC submachine guns were studies in mechanical simplicity.
About the author:Will Dabbs A native of the Mississippi Delta, Will is a mechanical engineer who flew UH1H, OH58A/C, CH47D, and AH1S aircraft as an Army Aviator. He has parachuted out of perfectly good airplanes at 3 o’clock in the morning and summited Mount McKinley, Alaska, six times…always at the controls of an Army helicopter, which is the only way sensible folk climb mountains.
Major Dabbs eventually resigned his commission in favor of medical school where he delivered 60 babies and occasionally wrung human blood out of his socks. Will works in his own urgent care clinic, shares a business build-ing precision rifles and sound suppressors, and has written for the gun press since 1989. He is married to his high school sweetheart, has three awesome adult children, and teaches Sunday School. Turn-ons include vintage German machineguns, flying his sexy-cool RV6A airplane, Count Chocula cereal, and the movie “Aliens.”
WASHINGTON, D.C.-(Ammoland.com)- Newly leaked documents have shown the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has stepped up its zero-tolerance policy against federal firearms licensees (FFLs).
The documents were turned up by Gun Owners of America (GOA) and show that the ATF is targeting FFLs with license revocations. The Biden administration has vowed to target “rogue” FFLs, and it seems like the ATF is capitulating to his demands. An earlier AmmoLand News report shows that revocations increased by 500% last year.
“Joe Biden has weaponized ATF against gun owners and the firearms industry in an attempt to violate the Second Amendment and expand his illegal gun registry,” Aidan Johnston, GOA’ Director of Federal Affairs told AmmoLand. “Rather targeting those who display clear negligence and disregard for the law, ATF now revokes licenses without warning at the discovery of a first mistake by honest gun dealers. When Federal Firearms Licensees are forced out of business, ATF adds their records to its digital gun registry that has nearly a billion gun and gun owner records. GOA is already working with Second Amendment champions like Rep. Michael Cloud on Capitol Hill to address this alarming issue and eliminate this unconstitutional gun registry.”
The documents lay down the new one-strike policy that is being implemented nationwide by the Bureau. The guidelines were sent to Industry Operation Inspectors (IOIs) across the country. These ATF employees are responsible for inspections of FFLs to ensure compliance with the law.
The new policy will see more FFLs lose their license for a litany of violations. Transferring a firearm to someone that is in the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) indices as prohibited will get an FFL revoked. It goes even further. Even if a person passes a NICS check, and the IOI determines that the FFL has reasons to believe that person is prohibited, the IOI can revoke the gun shop’s license and shutter the operation.
The ATF will shut down the gun store if an FFL fails to run a background check or verify an alternate permit. Certain states, like Arizona, allow a concealed carry permit to be used instead of running a NICS check. If an FFL runs a NICS check and it is delayed, the FFL can transfer the firearm legally after three days. If the FFL transfers the gun early, this is reason enough for the FFL to have their license revoked.
Even if the NICS check is approved, if the gun shop transfers the firearm 30 days after the FBI gives the go-ahead, the ATF will put it out of business. The dealer must run a new background check. This policy even applies to pawn redemptions and consignments.
Gun shops also must respond to trace requests within 24 hours or have their FFL revoked by the ATF.
This standard could have devastating effects on tabletop dealers that do not operate the phones every day. When this writer owned a gun shop in Virginia and worked for a Silicon Valley-based company somehow, the ATF got my California number and called for a trace request. Since I spent almost all my time in Virginia, I missed the trace request for three days. If that had happened now, my FFL would have been revoked.
Anything the ATF considers false or misleading on an FFL application would be grounds for revocation. This provision includes withholding information. The document does not provide any additional information about what would be considered misleading.
The final reason for the revocation of an FFL would deny entry to an IOI during business hours. When an FFL application is filled out, applicants must provide business hours even if they only plan to work by appointment. If an IOI shows up during those hours, they must be granted access to the business. This provision also might affect tabletop dealers that do not keep regular hours.
The IOI’s discretion is removed from the document, making revocation the default standard.
About John Crump
John is a NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people of all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons and can be followed on Twitter at @crumpyss, or at www.crumpy.com.
This nondescript house in North Memphis was the site of Something Truly Horrible back in 1983.
On January 12, 1983, on a cluttered street in Memphis, Tennessee, an off-duty police officer happened upon a purse snatching. Unable to apprehend the criminal, the officer did, however, recognize the suspect. The cop subsequently drove to the man’s home in the company of two other patrolmen. Finding the house empty the officers actually contacted the suspect but were unable to understand him on the phone. They subsequently gave up, filed a report, and called it a day.
Lindberg Sanders had a documented history of mental illness and an insensate hatred for police officers.
At the time the suspect in the purse snatching was at another house in North Memphis along with thirteen other African American males. These men had spent the day smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol. They were all members of a nameless religious cult led by a 49-year-old mental patient named Lindberg Sanders.
Sanders was a Rastafarian of sorts only with a liberal sprinkling of crazy scattered across the top.
Lindbergh Sanders described himself as “Black Jesus,” and his was an odd theology indeed. His Rastafarian rites forbade his acolytes from eating pork, drinking water, or wearing hats. He had informed his followers that the world would end on January 10th, two days prior. When he was proved wrong he found himself in a foul mood.
The interaction between Sanders’ strange cult and the Memphis Police Department ended badly.
Amongst a bewildering array of nonsensical practices, Sanders also vehemently denigrated the police as tools of Satan. The relatively benign purse snatching query from police catalyzed Sanders’ toxic milieu. The subsequent conflagration was an epic bloodbath.
Patrolman Bobby Hester was a combat veteran and an experienced police officer.
Sanders had the original suspect anonymously call the police to his North Memphis house ostensibly to discuss the purse snatching. 34-year-old Vietnam veteran Patrolman Bobby Hester and his partner Ray Schwill answered the call. Once they entered the house the two white police officers realized they were both surrounded and outnumbered.
Officer Hester found himself at the mercy of crazed cultists.
Hester radioed for backup, and the two officers attempted to extricate themselves. The cultists gained control of Officer Schwill’s gun and shot him in the face with it. Schwill nonetheless made it to the door and safety. Patrolman Hester was taken captive. Several members of the cult fled the house and were eventually apprehended.
Officers used this van for cover during the subsequent exchange of fire.
The first responding officer immediately attempted to enter the home only to be thrown bodily off the porch. The second went in shooting, exiting the house to reload several times. Despite his efforts, they were nonetheless unable to reach Patrolman Hester.
Police negotiators attempted to establish a rapport with Sanders and his followers.
Memphis Police quickly surrounded the house and began negotiations with Sanders. Sanders and his followers had Officer Hester’s radio and used it to communicate with authorities. Sanders announced his intent to murder Officer Hester live over a Memphis radio station. He stated that he held a gun to the patrolman’s head and that any effort to approach the house would end in the lawman’s death. Neighbors and the escaped cult members all claimed the suspects were heavily armed.
This was the bedroom where Hester was held throughout the ordeal.
What happened next is disputed. Sanders activated the radio as his followers beat and tortured Patrolman Hester. Hester’s pleas could be heard clearly by officers outside the dwelling. His comrades pressed for permission to attempt a rescue. Concerned about Sanders’ earlier threat and still holding out hope for a peaceful solution, administrators dragged out their discourse with Sanders for some thirty hours. This fateful decision has been second-guessed countless times since.
When it became obvious that all peaceful options had been exhausted, Memphis police commanders gave their approval for an assault.
At 0300 on January 13th everything went quiet. Sanders refused to communicate, and Hester could no longer be heard. Microphones pointed at the house detected, “My daddy is dead. My brother is dead. The devil is dead.” Police administrators finally gave the go-ahead for a dynamic entry.
The Assault
The Memphis PD tactical team led with tear gas.
The six-man Memphis TACT team deployed tear gas and flash-bang grenades before storming the house. They carried M16A1 rifles and 12-gauge shotguns. The entire operation took some twenty minutes. The tactical team was met with gunfire in the first room they entered. Patrolman Hester’s body had been placed near the front door in a vain effort at slowing their progress.
The TACT team officers neutralized all of the barricaded suspects despite the low light and cluttered nature of the home.
In the ensuing firefight, the tactical team fired a total of eighty rounds. Sanders and his remaining followers were killed to a man, all but one shot in the head. The suspects fired a total of twelve rounds from the two .38 revolvers taken from Hester and Schwill. These were the only two firearms recovered at the scene. Crime scene diagrams and photographs depicted the dead cult members lined up on the floor in a bedroom.
By the time tactical officers made their entry Officer Hester had been dead for hours.
The tactical team found Hester handcuffed to a chair and beaten to death. He had been viciously tortured with a variety of implements. At the time of the assault, Hester had been dead between twelve and twenty-four hours.
The Weapons
This was one of the M16A1 rifles used by the Memphis TACT team.
The tactical team carried selective-fire M16A1 rifles and short-barreled Remington 870 pump-action shotguns. I was seventeen years old and living about an hour south of Memphis at the time of this tragedy. I recall seeing news reports of the event.
I remember images on the news of the officers’ M16A1 rifles sporting heavy police flashlights taped to their forends. Configuring their weapons thusly would have made them much more effective in the chaotic darkness of Sanders’ cluttered home.
As the combat inside the house would inevitably be close range, dark, and pitiless, news reports showed that the SWAT officers had secured powerful D-cell police flashlights to the triangular forends of their weapons with tape. Observers outside the house reported hearing automatic weapons fire during the assault.
The M16A1 was the standard-issue military weapon for US armed forces for almost two decades.
The M16A1 is a lightweight and maneuverable assault rifle well suited for combat in close quarters. Nowadays everybody mounts tactical lights on the forends of their weapons. In 1983, however, the use of onboard weapon lights was groundbreaking stuff indeed.
The earliest AR15 rifles were almost identical to the new BRN-Proto from Brownells. This is a splendid recreation of those first trailblazing weapons even down to their unique 25-round straight magazines.
The M16A1 was a product-improved version of the original Stoner-inspired AR15. In 1958 the US military first conducted trials of these small-caliber 5.56mm rifles alongside the heavier .30-caliber M14. Initial reports were overwhelmingly positive.
The earliest M16 rifles deployed for combat in Vietnam sported a three-prong flash suppressor, a slick-sided upper receiver, and a buttstock without a trap for cleaning supplies.
As a result, in 1963 the first batch of redesignated M16 rifles was shipped to Vietnam for combat trials with South Vietnamese Army units and US Army Special Forces.
The M16A1 included several improvements over the previous M16.
Soon thereafter the weapon was updated to include an enclosed birdcage flash suppressor, a forward bolt assist device, and a redesigned buttstock with a rigid sling swivel and storage compartment for a cleaning kit. This improved rifle was designated the M16A1 and soldiered on until replaced by the heavier M16A2 in the 1980s.
The Remington 870 slide-action shotgun is the most produced scattergun in human history.
The Remington 870 slide action shotgun first saw service in 1950 and has remained in constant production until the present day. More than 11 million copies have been manufactured. The 870 is a bottom-loading, side-ejecting slide-action design that feeds from an under-barrel tubular magazine. Literally countless stock, magazine, and barrel options have made the 870 the most accessorized and customized shotgun ever contrived.
This was one of the shotguns used in the Shannon Street assault. Note the 12-inch barrel and custom ammo holder.
The shotguns used in the Shannon Street assault sported wooden stocks, shortened 12-inch barrels, and accessory ammunition carriers. In competent hands and at close quarters this weapon would offer overwhelming firepower combined with respectable maneuverability.
The tapered forearm of the M16A1 lent itself to the improvised attachment of a police flashlight.
This operation represented a very early example of the tactical use of onboard weapon lights. The trend has subsequently circled the globe.
The Rest of the Story…
Memphis police tactics evolved substantially as a direct result of the Shannon Street debacle.
Repercussions from the Shannon Street Massacre, as it has come to be called, resonate even today. The decision to delay the assault in favor of negotiations ultimately sealed Officer Hester’s fate. Nowadays Memphis PD tactical doctrine mandates an assault the moment there is evidence of harm to an officer or citizen.
Officer Schwill was later accused of taunting Sanders during their initial exchange. If true I am not justifying this behavior. However, I have worked in an inner-city ER. It is tough not to get jaded when you are immersed in violence and chaos all the time.
Lindberg Sanders’ family paints an entirely different picture of the events that led up to the bloody nighttime assault at 2239 Shannon Street. They claim that the initial phone call to the police was intended to clear up a misunderstanding over the purse snatching. They say that things spiraled out of control only after Officer Schwill began goading Lindberg and his followers with a faux black accent, something he was apparently wont to do.
Several conflicting versions of events have been proposed in the years since the assault. Note the live 5.56mm round found ejected outside the Shannon Street home.
Sanders’ surviving children point out that six of the seven cult members were killed with shots to the head despite possessing only the two captured police weapons among them. This observation combined with the orientation of the bodies at the crime scene led them to claim that the suspects were killed execution-style. The pathology report did state, however, that there were no powder burns on the bodies. This would imply that they were all shot from a modest distance.
Given what Sanders and his followers did to Officer Hester I find it difficult to dredge up a great deal of sympathy for them.
Most of the sources I could find referred to the seven dead suspects as victims. Given that they tortured a police officer to death I struggle with that characterization. However, in the final analysis, little of it really matters.
Hester’s squad car remained outside the Shannon Street home during the standoff. Relationships between minority communities and Law Enforcement remain a thorny problem to this day.
Self-serving politicians, a ghoulish media, and our nation’s affinity for remaining perpetually offended continue to fuel tension between the black community and Law Enforcement. According to those who knew him, Lindberg Sanders hated cops no matter their race, age, or gender. In 1983 eight people lost their lives in the early salvoes of a self-sustaining cycle of hatred and violence that persists today.
Officer Bobby Hester was a casualty of the ongoing race-defined conflict in modern America.Onboard weapon lights like this superb 1000-lumen Streamlight PROTAC HL-X are de rigueur today. Lights on weapons were radical stuff indeed back in 1983.
Some of about 125 weapons confiscated in a gang takedown are displayed at a press conference on May 21, 2009 in the Los Angeles-area community of Lakewood, California. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)
In the wake of a devastating mass shooting in Monterey Park last month in which 11 people were killed during a Lunar New Year celebration, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is set to evaluate and discuss new gun control measures in hopes of curbing gun violence in the county.
Several motions are expected to be presented at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, with proposals both ambitious and small in scale.
Countywide gun owner registry
Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Hilda Solis have proposed a motion that would direct the County’s legal counsel to study the feasibility and legality of implementing a countywide gun registry.
The registry would be created in partnership with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and would use existing data and records to create a database that is “easily accessible for law enforcement first responders.”
Horvath and Solis say that the current system for gun tracing is a slow and tedious process and a countywide registry would make it easier for law enforcement officers to track down criminals.
“Having access to a database that lists the firearm(s) registered to a certain address would allow first responders to better assess the situation and adjust their approach accordingly when responding to a call for service at an address with a licensed firearm,” the motion reads.
Even if the Board of Supervisors agrees to move forward with the proposal, a countywide registry would not be immediately implemented and it would likely face many legal challenges. Federal law currently prohibits the Federal Government from having its own nationwide gun owner registry, the motion says.
Liability insurance
Additionally, the motion directs Los Angeles County to look into the possibility of requiring gun owners in the county to carry some form of liability insurance for their firearms.
The hope, according to the motion language, is that the insurance requirement will encourage firearm owners to “take safety classes, use gun safes, install trigger locks, or utilize chamber-load indicators.”
The idea of liability insurance requirement is a popular suggestion among gun control advocates, and the Supervisors’ proposal says there is some data to support its effectiveness.
The County’s Counsel would be required to report the findings of both the registry and insurance items within 90 days of the motion’s passage — if it passes.
Warning signs and secure storage
While those two proposals are quite ambitious and abstract at the current juncture, there are two additional items that appear likely to move forward with some immediacy.
If passed, the County would require new signage that warns of the dangers of firearms to be displayed at businesses where guns are sold.
Additionally, a requirement could be instituted that would require firearms at a gun owner’s home be securely stored in a locked container or disabled with a trigger lock.
Citing a study from the Journal of the American Medical Association, the proposals states that households with locked firearms and ammunition saw a vast decrease in self-inflicted firearms injuries and a much lower risk of unintentional firearms injuries among children.
Currently, California law requires firearm owners to keep guns safely secured and requires trigger locks be sold simultaneously with firearms sales. But, the motion argues, the State does not clearly define what counts as “safe storage” and the requirement only exists for home in which children live or regularly visit.
“The County has the ability to build upon state law with specific requirements for safe gun storage which could prevent the unintentional deaths of children and teen suicides by as much as 85% depending on the type of storage and could also prevent guns from being easily stolen in the case of a home invasion,” the motion reads.
Consumers can buy gun storage devices that are approved by the United States Department of Justice for as little as $40 and trigger locks can often be obtained for free from police and sheriff’s stations.
Assault weapons ban
Another motion authored by Solis and Supervisor Janice Hahn urges the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to publicly support efforts by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein to reinstate the nation’s expired ban on the sale and manufacture of assault weapons.
.50 caliber ammo ban and County property restrictions
And a third motion, also authored by Solis and Hahn, aims to ban the sale of .50 caliber firearms and ammunition in Los Angeles County and restrict the carrying of firearms on County property.
County property includes beaches, playgrounds, plazas and County department buildings, the motion reads.
Both ordinances have been researched and are ready for immediate introduction, Hahn and Solis say.
That motion also includes language to evaluate L.A. County’s zoning regulations. If passed, the County will begin researching the legality of implementing zoning restrictions on firearms dealers, including establishing a safe “buffer zone” to keep those businesses a yet-to-be determined distance from schools, parks and daycares, among other “sensitive areas.”
It will also call for stricter requirements for ammunition and firearms dealers to become licensed locally.
The L.A. County Department of Regional Planning and Treasurer and Tax Collector would be tasked with finalizing those two ordinances and would be asked to submit the findings to the Board for approval “as soon as possible.”
“Too many people have lost loved ones to gun violence in Los Angeles County. We must be united in our fight against gun violence and enhancing local regulations is an important part of the fight,” Solis and Hahn wrote in that motion.
It’s unclear at this time which, if any, motions will survive past Tuesday’s Supes meeting, but the Board currently carries a 4 to 1 Democrat majority and the lone Republican, Supervisor Kathryn Barger, has at times shown a propensity to support increased gun control measures during her terms as Supervisor.
Charles McGonigal, former special agent in charge of the FBI’s counterintelligence division in New York.
