This made me wonder how many of the guns going to criminals are coming from small-time mugs like Brady using straw purchasers. Though Brady was technically the head of an interstate gunrunning operation, he was really just a smalltime crook with a stupid plan to drive a trunk load of guns from Alabama to New York City. “They’re selling it, and a lot of it ends up with the drug cartels on our border,” Carlson said. In July 2022, according to court records, federal agents discovered a massive gun smuggling operation with ties to the Mexican cartel inside a home in southwest Arlington. In a 2022 BBC report, journalists went undercover on the dark web to debunk accusations made by Russian state media about Ukraine’s purported illicit weapons sales.
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Some fake sellers take your crypto and never ship what you ordered, or phishing sites that look like real marketplaces but steal your login info. And then there’s malware—click the wrong link or download the wrong file, and your device could get infected. In 2019, there were approximately 8,400 active sites on the dark web, selling thousands of products and services daily.
- In doing so, DarkOwl analysts uncovered a confluence between the three economies, indicating a possible interrelationship between the supply routes moving drugs, weapons, and people around the world.
- Villarreal was “organized and detail-oriented,” and would “request specific makes, models, and calibers,” Pond said, according to court documents.
- It examined more than 9,700 closed ATF firearm trafficking investigations that began between 2017 and 2021.
- There is little public oversight despite the fact that a number of these departments have a poor track record when it comes to monitoring and control over their firearms.
- The Biden administration will likely “use the new data to muster support for regulations closing a loophole that has allowed kitchen-table dealers, gun-show vendors and online sellers to avoid background checks required of 80,000 federally licensed dealers,” The New York Times said.
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Damages could run as high as $10 billion if the suit is successful, Mexican officials have estimated, though a federal law that shields gun companies from liability for crimes committed with their products makes victory a longshot. The lawsuit also seeks tighter controls on sales, but the emergence of sites like Armslist complicates any potential effort to limit guns falling into the wrong hands. Another key data point demonstrates the shift in the types of supply lines, or trafficking channels, used to move firearms out of lawful commerce into the illegal market over the past two decades. This directive acknowledged the urgent need for data-driven strategies to curb gun violence and illegal gun trafficking across the nation. In addition, although federal law requires licensed dealers to conduct background checks, ATF does not have the resources to fully enforce this requirement. As a result, state laws that mirror the federal requirement enable prosecution of dealers who sell firearms “off the books” to ineligible individuals.
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These weapons fuel violence, crime, and conflict, posing significant challenges to public safety and global security. As early as June 2022, BBC reported that Russian state TV “routinely runs stories claiming Ukraine is selling weapons supplied by the West” on the dark web, a part of the internet not visible to search engines and home to online black markets. According to the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, news reports have claimed weapons from the war in Ukraine were “finding their way to Finnish gangsters, French rioters, Nigerian fighters and the Mexican cartels.” The interviews helped researchers identify six main channels through which underworld criminals circumvent Australia’s strict gun laws to purchase firearms illegally. The Biden administration has separately proposed a rule that would require thousands more gun sellers to get licensed and run background checks.
To produce the NFCTA, the ATF assembled a team of subject experts from ATF, as well as from academic and related fields. Although ATF issues a variety of public and law enforcement reports and bulletins regarding firearm commerce, trafficking, and related issues every year, it has not undertaken a joint academic study on the scale of the NFCTA in more than 20 years. The darknet cannot show the full extent of the complicated relationship between arms, drugs, and human trafficking. However, using DarkOwl Vision to explore these relationships offers a snapshot into both the physical and digital realms of illicit goods and exploitation that often accompany each other.
The ex-deputy, Don Horton, told VICE News he doesn’t want guns winding up in the hands of criminals, but he also doesn’t view Armslist as being problematic because there are plenty of other ways to acquire weapons without undergoing a background check. The allegation that gun buyers and sellers are turning to Armslist to avoid background checks is not new. In 2019, researchers at the University of Minnesota analyzed data from more than 4.9 million Armslist posts and found that less than 10 percent mentioned a background check. The advocacy group Everytown For Gun Safety looked at 9 million posts on Armslist from 2018 to 2020 and found that more than three-quarters of listings by unlicensed sellers did not require a background check. For about six or seven months, according to court documents reviewed by VICE News, Villarreal acquired guns off the internet in the U.S. and resold them to buyers in Mexico, where firearms are strictly regulated and fetch high prices on the black market. From that data, the researchers estimate firearms and related goods generate 136 sales per month, and a monthly revenue of $80,000.
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Those avenues included brokers who “vouched” for the credibility of a buyer to gain access to a gun dealer, family connections and straight theft. Yet for all their efforts much of the illegal activity on the dark web remains beyond the reach of the police, and to some supporters of the dark web, its anonymity is its virtue. “Police officers on both sides of the Atlantic say the same thing,” says John Carr, an internet security advisor to the British government and the United Nations. They have now been destroyed by the lab as possession of DMT can lead to a jail sentence of up to seven years.
You Don’t Need FFL, Permit Or Licenseto Buy Guns, Firearms And Other Weapons!
We prioritize your anonymity and privacy, ensuring that all transactions are confidential and untraceable. Your identity and purchase details are never shared, allowing you to shop with peace of mind. While some of these markets were shuttered by law enforcement agencies – some took the easy way out with exit scams. Here are some of the now-defunct dark web markets that were notorious for cybercrime. Others are looking for stolen data, hacking services, or even banned books and political content.
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The guns were used in 368 shooting cases, which are harder to investigate because unlicensed dealers aren’t required to keep records of their sales that could allow federal agents to trace the weapon back to the original buyer, said ATF Director Steve Dettelbach. New data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives shows that 68,000 illegally trafficked firearms in the U.S. came through unlicensed dealers who aren’t required to perform background checks over a five year report that was released Thursday, April 4, 2024. While international arms sales are tightly regulated, it’s perfectly legal for Americans to sell guns to each other without background checks—so long as the sellers are not “engaged in the business” of dealing firearms. Those who devote “time, attention, and labor” to selling guns, or seek to “profit through the repetitive purchase and resale of firearms,” have to apply for a federal license, but the ATF’s Chittum said there are really no hard-and-fast rules. The illegal arms trade, often referred to as the black market for firearms, poses a significant threat to global security.
Agent Mulham and the other two agents—John Curtis and Jason Zamaloff—all weighed in and agreed there is no precise formula for what handguns go for on the street, but basically guns are so readily available the black-market price is typically just a few hundred dollars more than retail. Harvard also debunked claims that Ukrainian arms were being sold to “Finnish gangsters, French rioters, Nigerian fighters, and Mexican cartels,” citing a report from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime. Russian state media amplified these claims, with RT running an “investigation” into alleged Western arms sales, despite fact-checkers, including the BBC World Service Disinformation Team, debunking the evidence. In another instance, Russian media misrepresented official oversight measures as proof of illicit activity.
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Pond agreed to surrender 114 pistols, rifles, and shotguns to federal authorities as part of his plea agreement. “You get people working for the cartel, or people working for a trafficking group, they’re looking for guns they want, they will travel throughout states just to get ’em,” the agent said. With a low-tech aesthetic similar to Craigslist’s and a simple user interface, Armslist quickly grew to become one of the most popular sites for gun sellers and buyers. There are glossier competitors, like the site Gunbroker, and local riffs such as Texas Gun Trader, but Armslist is the most ubiquitous and controversial. “When I heard them say that they decided to ban all gun-related ads because a few users cried out for it, it inspired me to create a place for law-abiding gun owners to buy and sell online without all of the hassles of auctions and shipping,” Gibbon said. A good chunk of the trades were destined for Europe, while the United States appears to be the main source where guns are sold from, according to the study.
The federal government also launched a new initiative last year, called Operation Southbound, with the goal of disrupting gun trafficking to Mexico. According to a recent government report, an estimated 200,000 firearms are smuggled into Mexico each year. DALLAS (CBSNewsTexas.com) — Guns purchased in Texas are ending up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels at an alarming volume.
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When ATF agents paid him a visit, Jump initially denied ever selling more than two guns at a time. Pond, however, had already shown the ATF text messages that proved Jump had sold him 14 guns in a single go just a few months earlier. Villarreal was “organized and detail-oriented,” and would “request specific makes, models, and calibers,” Pond said, according to court documents.
- “The gist of the opposition to Armslist lies in opposition to the private ownership of firearms,” the statement said.
- Utilizing direct deals via encrypted chats give both buyer and seller more privacy, especially from law enforcement which has become more adept at infiltrating and shutting down darknet marketplaces dedicated to illicit drugs.
- These platforms sell everything from drugs and fake IDs to weapons and hacking tools, resembling a digital black-market bazaar.
- DarkOwl analysts have previously released a report detailing the presence of alleged cartel-affiliated marketplaces on the darknet and detailed some of their product offerings including sophisticated concealed shipping.
Pistols were the most common item for sale, followed by rifles and sub-machine guns, the report reads. Of the 811 listings, 41 percent were for firearms; 27 percent were for arms-related digital products; and 22 percent were for ammunition. The most common firearms sold were pistols (84 percent) while rifles and submachine guns made up 10 and 6 percent of the listings, respectively. Roughly three-fifths of the weapons sold on a selection of dark web marketplaces originate from the United States, according to a new study examining the scope of the internet’s black market arms trade. In February 2023, the Department issued Volume II of the NFCTA, Crime Gun Intelligence and Analysis, which presents and analyzes data on crime guns (firearms used in crime) recovered between 2017 and 2021. The analysis reinforces the critical importance of ATF’s unique crime gun tracing authority and highlights the value of data from ATF’s National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) program.
Furthermore, trafficked firearms were used to commit additional crimes in almost 25 percent of the cases, Dettelbach said. That includes more than 260 murders and more than 220 attempted murders, according to the report. The three agents then explained that about 80 percent of the crime guns found in New York City come from out of state. That makes sense; after all, New Jersey and Connecticut are within commuting distance of New York City. They also said the average “time to crime” (the time it takes for a gun sold from a gun dealer to make it to a criminal’s hands and then to a crime scene) is 12 to 13 years in New York City.
