Being a criminal isn't a very difficult field to get into. You just have to break the law.
Sure, being good at being a criminal is a different matter--most suck at it, really--but it doesn't take a whole lot to be a criminal. Yet despite this simple tautology, some people are absolutely shocked to learn that criminals don't obey the law. They even write about it like it's news.
The latest example of this phenomenon is from the anti-gun "journalist" organization The Trace.
Russell, 23, wasn’t at the Armory for antique guns or war memorabilia. He was interested in semiautomatic handguns, and the Armory stocked those, as well. Russell, who had grown up in and around Bennington, met Vermont’s minimal requirements for buying a gun: He was of age and had no felony convictions. He wound up buying a Smith & Wesson pistol.
A week later, Russell was back in the shop, this time purchasing a Kahr PM9 handgun, a weapon its manufacturer markets as “a high-quality, extremely accurate, and easily concealable pistol.” Less than three months after that, on December 10, Russell again came through the doors of the Armory, walking out with a Stoeger STR-9.
Russell’s buying spree was hardly over. On December 12, 48 hours after his latest purchase at the Armory, Russell went to the Black Dog Guns and Shooting Supplies store in Rutland, some 50 miles away, and bought a pair of Glock pistols.
In all, from September 2020 to March 2022, Russell bought at least 15 handguns, including 10 from Bennington Armory.
“Dylan Russell passed all his federal background checks,” Jewett, the owner of the Armory, said in an interview.
However, Russell was more than just an enthusiastic purchaser of semiautomatic pistols. According to federal prosecutors, he was a shadowy soldier in a criminal enterprise meant to exploit two features of life in the state of Vermont: its gun laws and its deadly struggle with opioid addiction.
The authorities believe none of the guns Russell purchased were for him. He’d lied about that on the paperwork he signed when he bought them. He’d lied, as well, when he declared he did not abuse illicit drugs. He’d been using heroin ever since he graduated from high school.
Now, in case you need a refresher on gun laws, people who are using illegal drugs cannot lawfully purchase firearms. Russell lied on his paperwork because it specifically asks if you're using.
Hunter Biden is very familiar with this regulation now.
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Russell, however, then traded guns to dealers in exchange for illicit drugs, which is also a crime.
On multiple levels, crimes were committed.
But The Trace wants to make it out like this is the result of Vermont's relatively loose gun control laws. It's really not.
See, Russell broke the law. More laws wouldn't have stopped him from breaking the law. Russell had a clean background check. He didn't walk in like he was tweaking on something. He gave off no warning signs that he was doing anything underhanded.
So what laws would have stopped Russell that wouldn't have infringed on the rights of ordinary, law-abiding citizens?
Of course, the answer is that there are no such laws. They don't care about you and me and our ability to exercise our right to keep and bear arms. People like Russell aren't even the problem for them. The problem is us. We don't want to give up our guns, so they try to use the people like Russell to justify their need for more and more laws, none of which would do a blasted thing to stop people putting guns in criminal hands.
