8 Charged in Gun Running Plot

[Mikebnice]

http://www.11alive.com/news/article_news.aspx?storyid=102399

ATLANTA (AP) -- A federal grand jury in Atlanta has charged eight people in an alleged plot to buy guns in Georgia that later were used in violent crimes in other states.

The indictment says that from February to October 2005, the defendants allegedly conspired to give false information for entry into the records of licensed firearms dealers and to resell weapons to convicted felons for a profit.

Those charged were identified as 33-year-old Gaclovis Reeves of Newark, New Jersey; 28-year-old Antonio Sutton of Stone Mountain; 23-year-old Sakinah Toms of Atlanta; 23-year-old Latovia Dantell Cunningham of Norcross; and 29-year-old Richard Washington, 27-year-old Craig Jerome Birdsong, 31-year-old Kwame Walker, and 30-year-old and Taisha Kenyetta Clayton, all of Lawrenceville.

Prosecutors said Sutton, Clayton, Walker, Toms, Birdsong and Cunningham are Georgia residents recruited by Reeves and Washington to serve as "straw purchasers" of the guns.

William McMahon, in charge of the ATF's New York field division, said today that because the Newark police trace all crime guns, federal agents were able to identify straw purchasers and "the traffickers who brought them back north and put them into the hands of criminals, including violent gang members."

 

[.cheese.]

A federal grand jury in Atlanta has charged eight people in an alleged plot to buy guns in Georgia that later were used in violent crimes in other states.

well, I'm not one to typically get annoyed with wording or grammar, but how do 8 people get charged with a plot "to buy guns" (implying a future event) that were "later used" (past tense and future tense mixed).

The only way that this statement could be correct is if they had traveled back into time to purchase particular guns before the crimes they were used in were committed.... but then if they did that they would avert the particular crime that the gun was later used in by altering the future.... and the whole thing would be impossible, and therefore this news-story could never have been printed as it never would have happened!

.... and as for the rest of the story... surprise surprise! Guns get to the streets regardless of background checks, gun control, etc.... and they pretty much always will so far as I can see.

Although I had to interview a former felon recently (part of my final thesis assignment that is thankfully over and done with) and he told me the prices that he would have paid in the illegal gun market for certain things. The prices were below regular retail, so I have to imagine this scheme wasn't particularly well thought out by the criminals involved..... then again criminals often have below average IQ's (at least according to my sociology prof. a few years ago).