Tag: guns

Federal judge rules law criminalizing possession of guns without serial numbers is unconstitutional

A federal judge in West Virginia has ruled that a federal law banning possession of a gun with its serial number removed is unconstitutional, relying on the legal standard established by the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Second Amendment ruling in June.

The federal law in question, 18 U.S.C. § 922(k), prohibits “any person” from knowingly transporting, in interstate or foreign commerce, “any firearm which has had the importer’s or manufacturer’s serial number removed, obliterated, or altered,” or from possessing such weapons.

In U.S. v. Price, U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin found the federal law was not consistent with the United States’ “historical tradition of firearm regulation,” which was the standard established by the Supreme Court in its 6-3 New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen decision.

The criminal case concerns Randy Price, a man who was charged with illegal possession of a firearm that had the serial number removed. The weapon was found in his vehicle during a traffic stop in Charleston. The judge dismissed that charge, but kept another charge against Price of illegally possessing the gun after being convicted of previous felonies.

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D.C. police officers under investigation for confiscating guns without arresting suspects

Several police officers in Washington, D.C., are under investigation for reportedly confiscating illegal guns from criminal suspects while allowing the criminals themselves to go free.

City Police Chief Robert Contee confirmed the investigation on Friday, saying it covered seven officers and supervisors within the city’s law enforcement apparatus. 

“In these cases, the suspect was not arrested, and the suspect should’ve been arrested,” Contee said during a press conference late on Friday. 

“The firearm was taken and placed into evidence, however, the suspect was allowed to go free, and that’s just not the way that we conduct business in the Metropolitan Police Department,” he said. 

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The U.S. Military Doesn’t Even Track How Many Weapons It Loses, And It Has Lost Thousands

Adamning investigative report published by The Associated Press today details how over 2,000 weapons have gone missing from military arsenals between 2010 and 2019. While the data set was far from complete, what the outlet did obtain shows a worrying pattern of lost and stolen weapons, some of which ended up in the hands of criminals who used them in the commission of violent crimes, while others were even simply discarded in public parks.

The Associated Press‘s investigation states that, between 2010 and 2019, these weapons went missing or were deliberately taken from a wide variety of locations, including armories, warehouses, firing ranges, Navy vessels, or even while in transit. Reasons cited in the report included unlocked doors, burglary, security personnel falling asleep, or lapses in surveillance and other security systems. 1,504 weapons were reported missing or stolen from the Army, 211 from the Navy, 204 from the Marines, and 39 were categorized as “Other,” which presumably includes the U.S. Coast Guard and Department of Defense security forces like the Pentagon Force Protection Agency.

While the Marines and Navy offered their own figures about weapons lost or stolen throughout the last decade, the Army and Air Force did not willingly provide The Associated Press with exact numbers about how many of their weapons were unaccounted for, so the report instead relied on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for military criminal case files, as well as internal military small arms registries. One of those FOIA requests filed with the Army’s Office of the Provost Marshal General revealed 1,303 lost firearms from the Army alone. The AP reported the Air Force was less cooperative:

The Air Force was the only service branch not to release data. It first responded to several Freedom of Information Act requests by saying no records existed. Air Force representatives then said they would not provide details until yet another FOIA request, filed 1.5 years ago, was fully processed.

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