There is no joy in this one.
Larry Vickers pled guilty to federal firearm charges yesterday.
“But,” you say, “Larry Vickers isn’t a political figure.” Right you are, Bob.
Mr. Vickers was charged with four other men: Sean Sullivan, James Tafoya, Matthew Hall, and James Sawyer. Mr. Hall was the chief of police in Coats, North Carolina, and Mr. Sawter was the chief of police of Ray, North Dakota. This is where the flaming hyenas come in.
He was a Fed?! I know, I know, quel fromage! But really?
Allegedly, all of these guys came up with a really clever scheme.
The indictment alleges that, beginning in at least June 2018 through at least March 2021, the defendants conspired to acquire machineguns and/or other restricted firearms, such as short-barreled rifles, by falsely representing that the firearms would be used for demonstration to law enforcement agencies, including the Coats Police Department and the Ray Police Department. The indictment further alleges that Hall, Sawyer, and other conspirators signed law letters with no expectation that the weapons would ever be demonstrated to their respective law enforcement agencies.
The defendants allegedly intended to impermissibly import into the United States and resell the machineguns and other firearms for profit or to keep for their own use and enjoyment. Sullivan allegedly submitted the false law letters to the ATF seeking to import the machineguns and other restricted weapons. Once the firearms were received, Sullivan allegedly kept some of the machineguns and other restricted weapons and transferred some of the weapons to Vickers, Tafoya, and other conspirators.
Now, everyone else hasn’t gone to trial, and should be considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
So just not illegal import of restricted firearms, but also sanction violations. “Between July 2014 and March 2021” makes me wonder who the sanctions violations were against.
I haven’t seen any coverage of this anywhere, including the usual gun blogs. The only reason I know about it is that Mike the Musicologist sent me a link to the Justice Department press release. I feel kind of bad for Mr. Vickers, who also was dealing with cancer a while back. But this doesn’t sound like BATFE “paperwork” violations. This sounds like a pretty serious conspiracy to illegally import restricted weapons under cover of the law enforcement exemption.
While I object to the idea that what these people did should be against the law, the fact remains that it is, and they apparently (“all suspects” etc) tried to camouflage it as “only ones”. You know, “we’re the only ones competent enough to have full-auto weapons. We’re the only ones competent enough to carry a Glock.”
That, I do resent.
There is a heck of a lot of difference between an FFL making a spelling mistake on a 4473 and willingly participating in a scheme to find a way around the 1934 laws regarding fully automatic weapons. Like you, I don’t think that there should be any law regarding the type of firearms that an American citizen is allowed to possess, the fact is, the laws do exist, and it is a simple enough matter to follow them.
I think that the conspiracy to violate sanctions might just be more of a problem for Mr. Vickers than the other firearms charges. However, since he is a pretty well known figure in the gun culture, it won’t surprise me if the government under President Biden, a well known anti gun crusader from way back, tries to crucify him, and that in public.
The question is, if they have only done a Justice Dept. release on this, and haven’t trumpeted it to the media far and wide, do they have much bigger fish to fry? Meaning, are there other targets with even more name recognition just waiting for the other shoe to drop?
Like you, I find myself conflicted as to whether to feel sorry for these people or to be angry with them for considering themselves above the rest of us. I guess the only thing to do for now is to stay tuned.
It appears that the conspiracy to do an end-run of 1934, 1968 and 1986 laws on the acquisition and ownership of machine guns was discovered during the investigation into their buying parts kits from Russia after the 2014 sanctions were in place.
Those sanctions are constitutional.
The gun laws are malum prohibitum, but you break them at your peril.
Thanks, McThag.
I’m probably not terribly bright, but I guess I wasn’t thinking we had sanctions in place against Russia in 2014.
Maybe I just wasn’t conscious of it at the time? Or maybe time got away from me? I was thinking the sanctions that stopped the import of Commie mil-surp ammo were more recent…