Criminals Are Getting Guns From Unexpected Places (It’s Cops)

A disturbing but not especially surprising exposé has detailed a decades-long trend of cops illegally selling firearms, some of them military-grade, as a side hustle.

The report from CBS found at least 50 cases of sheriffs, lieutenants, chiefs of police, and police captains across the country who have been involved in questionable gun sales over the past 20 years. The weapons, sold at enormous markups, end up in the hands of gun enthusiasts or violent criminals, who then turn around and use those guns to commit murder and other crimes.

According to the report, nearly 26,000 guns used to commit crimes in the United States between 2017 and 2021 originally belonged to either the US military, US law enforcement, or a US government agency.

There isn’t an exact count of how many of those guns were simply lost or stolen versus illicitly sold to criminals. That said, government auditors who investigated missing firearms over a 15 period found more than two-thirds of the missing guns had been illegally sold or traded.

Some of the cases involved police officers providing firearms to Mexican cartels, while others were selling high-powered rifles to sanctioned Russian arms dealers. Things like this are allowed to happen because there is very little oversight on either the weapons law enforcement is provided or those it accesses through its investigations.

For instance, a 2018 audit by the Government Accountability Office found that $100 million worth of guns and ammo purchased by ICE, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, were unaccounted for. One hundred million dollars in guns and bullets just vanished into thin air.

All told, CBS News identified 58 cases where officers were charged with illegally selling guns. An astounding 56 of them were either convicted or admitted their guilt.