‘It is inexcusable’: Kansas City sues feds to shut down gun manufacturer
Kansas City is once again suing to shut down an arms manufacturer that received a new federal license after lawsuits and unpaid taxes bankrupted the company, Mayor Quinton Lucas announced Friday.
The city of Kansas City, along with the state of Illinois, is suing the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives over its decision to award a federal firearms license to JA Industries, renamed from the now defunct Jimenez Arms. The two governments are joined by the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund.
According to the lawsuit, the three plaintiffs are suing ATF and its leadership over its “arbitrary, capricious and unlawful decision” to award a license to the company, which the lawsuit claims has repeatedly broken federal firearms laws and contributed to gun trafficking.
“It is inexcusable that the regulators we rely on to enforce federal gun laws have failed to take action despite the clear evidence that Jimenez Arms contributed to gun trafficking,” Lucas said. “This effort is about accountability — and it’s also protecting Kansas City residents by addressing an ongoing threat to public safety in our city.”
The lawsuit was filed Friday in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. It seeks to force ATF to revoke the license it granted JA Industries.
According to the lawsuit, Paul Jimenez previously owned Jimenez Arms, which the city sued a year ago over its connections to gun trafficking. The company filed for bankruptcy about a month later.
The lawsuit says that Jimenez applied for a new license under the name JA Industries and that ATF awarded the license in less than a month.
“Jimenez Arms continues to operate,” Lucas said on a conference call with reporters. “They continue to operate through their principal, they continue to operate under the name JA. They didn’t even try that hard to come up with an alternative name.”
The lawsuit says Jimenez pumps out tens of thousands of cheap handguns per year that have turned up at crime scenes in Kansas City and Chicago “at a rate disproportionate to the company’s market share.”
“This result is unsurprising,” the lawsuit says. “Cheap, poorly made pistols like these are particularly attractive to criminals who may need to replace or discard them at a moment’s notice. This also makes them more profitable for traffickers — individuals who are unlicensed to sell firearms to third parties and do so illegally.”
Alla Lefkowitz, director of affirmative litigation at Everytown Law, called the situation an “appalling regulatory failure.”
“With so many red flags about this company in the ATF’s own records, it should never have even been a close call whether to allow it to continue selling guns under a new name,” Lefkowitz said in a statement. “ATF’s inexcusable decision raises serious questions, and it should be revoked before more guns manufactured by Paul Jimenez are trafficked into American cities.”
In an email, the ATF said it “does not comment on pending or ongoing litigation.”
The suit Kansas City filed last year against Jimenez Arms was meant to take aim at a gun trafficking scheme led by James Samuels, a former Kansas City Fire Department captain who was charged with federal gun crimes in October 2018. He pleaded guilty last summer.
But that lawsuit went beyond Samuels, alleging responsibility on the part of Jimenez Arms, several local gun dealers and individuals.
Among violations laid out in that lawsuit, Jimenez Arms shipped guns directly to Samuels’ home, knowingly breaking federal gun regulations. That case against Jimenez is essentially on hold while the company’s bankruptcy case proceeds.
Lucas said the city has known for years that firearms often used in violent crime in Kansas City do not originate here.
“We have manufacturers like these who are grossly irresponsible in working with criminal traffickers, who are grossly irresponsible in contributing to our significant gun problems,” Lucas said.
He said manufacturers are going to criminal traffickers rather than through responsible dealers.
“I do fully believe that if the ATF does the work that it needs to do, that if we’re able to stop Jimenez Arms through whatever shell company it’s trying to operate from, the streets of Kansas City will be safer, people in Kansas City will be safer, and we will save lives.”
Jimenez isn’t the last dealer Kansas City will look to hold accountable, Lucas said.
Kansas City experienced a record 182 homicides last year and has seen seven so far this year.
Jimenez is named in the case, but is not a defendant. An attorney who previously represented the company did not immediately return a request for comment. Neither did the company’s attorney for its bankruptcy proceedings.
Gun violence is the subject of a statewide journalism project The Star is undertaking in Missouri this year in partnership with the national service program Report for America and sponsored in part by Missouri Foundation for Health. As part of this project, The Star will seek the community’s help.
To contribute, visit Report for America online at reportforamerica.org.
This story was originally published January 15, 2021 at 2:36 PM.
