On June 9, the Kinston Department of Public Safety received a tip about illegal guns. The suspects were minors, according to the incident narrative.
Officers seized four .22-caliber rifles, two 7.62-caliber rifles, a .30-30-caliber rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun, a 20-gauge shotgun and a 9mm pistol.
In December, officers seized three 7.62x39mm assault rifles with accompanying ammunition. There were two 19-year-old suspects, a 17-year-old and a 25-year-old.
KDPS Director Bill Johnson said guns with younger suspects have become a trend in the city.
“What we’re seeing, we’re seeing two things — guns in the hands of younger and younger people, and the other thing we’re seeing is more and more high-powered type of firearms out there,” Johnson said. “When we did Project 61, we took more than 100 guns off the street. These have been since then. And so, they’re really starting to become a problem, an issue out in the community.”
Johnson said officers have noticed weapons on teens as young as 14, and it’s caused a change in the way officers have to view minors out on the street.
“We don’t want to go out and randomly frisk everybody in the community — that’s not it,” Johnson said. “But, because of that age demographic right there, that we’re seeing more and more of this type of activity, has led to the reason we’re doing that. We just have to be more active and more aggressive in what we’re doing.”
There isn’t one set method of supply — illegal firearms are coming in from multiple ways.
“Some of the guns that are purchased are stolen guns,” Johnson said. “We’ve recovered some weapons that were in breaking and enterings into residences, reported stolen. We’ve got guns that are outside this community, we’ve got guns from breaking and enterings in the county. But, also, some of these weapons are coming from definitely outside Kinston and sometimes outside the state.”
As to the high-powered nature of some of the weapons, Johnson said that may simply be what’s available for people looking to purchase a gun illegally. Lenoir County Sheriff’s Office Maj. Ryan Dawson said out in the county, guns are stolen during break-ins, but there isn’t a specific targeting of any one type of weapon.
“Our burglary rates, our break-ins in the county, a good amount of times, there are firearms stolen from these houses when people break into them,” Dawson said. “High-powered ones? No, it’s any type of gun they can get their hands on. When it comes to arresting (criminals), we do everything we can to track those. Of course, we don’t have a 100 percent success rate, unfortunately.”
In a June report by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, North Carolina ranked fifth in 2012 among states for the most firearms reported stolen or lost. Only Texas, Georgia, Florida and California had more than the reported 9,320 firearms in North Carolina.
Dawson said he credits that to tough gun permitting laws in the state that make criminals go to stolen weapons than try to use methods to go through legal channels.
In January, a South Carolina man was sentenced for illegally dealing guns in North Carolina, selling powerful weapons at gun shows and out of a car trunk in hotel parking lots. He may have continued his work if gun store staff hadn’t reported suspicious activity to authorities. A U.S. Attorney involved in the case said the case shows how difficult it is to track firearms.
“Gun trafficking cases are difficult to prosecute in part because there are no reporting requirement for the multiple purchase of long guns, including assault rifles both from licensed dealers and at gun shows,” Anne Tompkins, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, said to the Associated Press.
Wes Wolfe can be reached at 252-59-1075 and Wes.Wolfe@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter @WolfeReports.