Quinton Lucas: ATF must do more to get illegal guns out of Kansas City killers’ hands
When an industry’s aura of invincibility is pierced big changes can happen fast — just ask tobacco or pharmaceutical companies.
But even as the makers of cigarettes and opioid painkillers have been brought to account for putting profit over public health, the gun industry continues to rack up record sales while shootings spike in communities across the country. In the past few months, however, survivors of gun violence have made progress on taking the industry to task — and in the process, they’re creating a road map for others who want to hold rogue gun-makers and dealers accountable.
The most recent example involves J.A. Industries, a Nevada-based gun-maker. On Wednesday, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced its intent to revoke the company’s operating license. This comes in the wake of a lawsuit against the ATF filed by Kansas City, the Illinois attorney general and the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund — but it originated with one grieving family.
In July 2016, a 29-year-old named Alvino Dwight Crawford Jr. was shot and murdered in Kansas City. As law enforcement officers investigated the crime, they realized it fit a pattern: First, the gun used to kill Crawford made its way to the murderer through an illegal trafficking ring that funneled guns to buyers who were legally barred from having them. Second, the murder weapon was manufactured by Jimenez Arms, formerly one of the largest purveyors of cheap handguns, which are often found at crime scenes. Investigators eventually traced the gun back to a single trafficker who illegally sold 57 firearms made by Jimenez Arms, some of which had been sent directly from the company to the trafficker’s home even though he wasn’t a licensed seller, which the family alleged was a gross violation of federal law.
Three years after their son’s murder, Alvino and Beverly Crawford resolved to break the pattern and sue Jimenez Arms for selling weapons to the gun trafficker despite allegedly knowing or ignoring clear signs that he was dealing guns without a license. Lawsuits like this have been rare since 2005, when Congress bowed down to the National Rifle Association and granted the gun industry a remarkable level of legal immunity that other consumer product manufacturers can only dream about.
The Crawford family’s brave decision to take on the gun industry set off a consequential chain of events. Kansas City brought its own public nuisance lawsuit against Jimenez Arms, as well as other defendants, making it the first municipality in more than a decade to sue a gun manufacturer. In response to these two lawsuits, the owner of Jimenez Arms resorted to a favored tactic of rogue gun-makers: corporate three-card monte. First, owner Paul Jimenez took Jimenez Arms into bankruptcy. Then he utilized a different company called “J.A. Industries” to apply for a new manufacturer’s license. Just one month later, after conducting a single compliance inspection over the phone, the ATF inexplicably granted the license, despite Jimenez’s long history of flouting the rules. Unfortunately, this series of events also fits a pattern: From 2017 to 2020, ATF denied fewer than 0.1% of gun industry license applications.
But for once, the story doesn’t end with rogue members of the gun industry skirting the law. When Jimenez Arms’ unsold inventory of 340 pistols and 629 pistol frames went up for sale in a bankruptcy auction, Everytown put up the winning bid and had the guns safely destroyed, so they couldn’t be bought back by J.A. Industries or diverted into the criminal market. A few months later, the state of Illinois joined Kansas City and Everytown to sue the ATF for unlawfully issuing a manufacturer’s license to J.A. Industries. Illinois law prohibits the sale of pistols like those made by Jimenez Arms, and yet their guns had been turning up at crime scenes all over the state.
Shortly after the suit was filed, the ATF did what should have happened in the first place: It launched a full inspection of the company, and now the agency intends to revoke J.A. Industries’ license. And this is not an isolated case of the gun industry being held accountable. This February, the gun-maker Remington reached a $73 million settlement with survivors of the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. That same month, the Supreme Court of Texas allowed a lawsuit to proceed against LuckyGunner.com, which is alleged to have illegally sold ammunition over the internet to the 17-year-old who has been charged with committing the 2018 mass shooting at Santa Fe High School.
But all of these courtroom wins raise an urgent question: Why has it been left up to survivors, cities and advocacy organizations alone to hold gun-makers accountable? And why did it require three separate lawsuits for the ATF to act? To his great credit, President Joe Biden has charged the Department of Justice with leading a gun violence prevention strategy that includes a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to rogue gun dealers and new “strike forces” to crack down on illegal trafficking. This is a promising start — now it’s time for DOJ to meet the moment and use every tool at its disposal to keep unscrupulous traffickers from pumping guns into the streets.