Supposedly destroyed DOJ firearms made it into the hands of a person making their own guns

Let's go over a hilarious report from the Department of Justice Office of Inspector General. While I support the Second Amendment and do not believe that these so called “ghost guns” should be illegal, this is still both important and funny. It shows that there has been corruption so long that the citizens of this nation should be worried.

This story would probably have never been told if it was not for the fact the firearm parts were found by local law enforcement. While I support the Second Amendment, which means I do not believe that the supposed “ghost guns” are illegal. That said, this person should cooperate, not for a lighter sentence, so we know who is profiting from taxpayers. These firearms were bought with taxes and used by people paid with taxes. So, the parts not being sold to bring money back for value to the taxpayers annoys me.

What Happened

Here, via the DOJ OIG report, is what happened.

https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/reports/25-001.pdf

The OIG initiated an investigation after a local police department recovered a PMF during an arrest of a private citizen and traced the serial number of the slide and barrel of the PMF to the DEA. According to DEA records, the slide and barrel were part of a DEA employee issued firearm that had been destroyed over three years earlier. During the course of the investigation, the OIG learned that, before the PMF was recovered, the DEA’s process for destroying DEA employee issued firearms involved separating the slide and barrel from the rest of the firearm and placing the slide and barrel in open bins in a gun cleaning room that was collocated at the DEA and FBI training academies in Quantico, Virginia. The OIG further learned that the gun cleaning room was accessible to thousands of employees and contractors at Quantico, including FBI and DEA armory employees, FBI and DEA academy trainers and students, cleaning staff, maintenance contractors, and others. Because the gun cleaning room was in a shared building that also held the Quantico cafeteria, security control measures were limited to a Quantico access card provided to every individual that had access to the grounds at Quantico. There were no safeguards to ensure that the location where the slides and barrels were stored was secured, document who had access to the location or DEA property, or document when the slides and barrels were destroyed.

During the investigation, the OIG further learned that the FBI similarly, at least sometimes, separated slides and barrels from the rest of FBI employee issued firearms pending destruction and placed the slides and barrels in the same open bins accessible to thousands of individuals at Quantico. We found that multiple FBI employees disagreed on their standard practice regarding the storage of these parts. While some FBI employees stated they never separated the slides and barrels of firearms from their frames, others stated this was standard practice. Furthermore, some FBI employees stated the DEA and FBI never shared bins for scrap metal including slides and barrels, while others again recognized this as standard practice.

The DEA and some FBI employees told the OIG that they considered only the frames and receivers of employee issued firearms as necessary to safeguard in a secure vault prior to destruction. This is problematic given that slides and barrels can be attached to compatible frames or receivers and end up in the hands of criminals. Further, although the slides and barrels are not considered firearms in themselves, they contain serial numbers that identify their origin and implicate the DEA or FBI when recovered. While the DEA and the FBI informed the OIG that they are no longer using the open bins at Quantico to store slides and barrels of firearms that are pending destruction, neither the DEA nor the FBI have written policies memorializing this change. We concluded that the lack of safe handling and destruction policies for these firearm parts creates a risk that allows for the theft of government property without accountability and the potential for serious crimes to be committed with that government property. Indeed, in the investigation that led to this memorandum, the OIG was unable to identify the individual or individuals who stole the DEA slide and barrel that were later recovered during an arrest.

During the OIG’s investigation, we also identified concerns with the DEA’s documentation processes for destroying firearms. Specifically, we found that the DEA conducted an inventory of several hundred employee issued firearms intended for destruction in 2019 and later found that 100 of those firearms were unaccounted. The DEA ultimately concluded that the 100 firearms were destroyed based on an unofficial spreadsheet created by a DEA employee; however, there was no official documentation to confirm this conclusion was accurate. The DEA does not specifically require employees, when storing employee issued firearms pending destruction, to maintain documentation identifying the particular DEA employees who handled or had access to those firearms, nor does it contain standards for how DEA employees should conduct a proper inventory of such firearms. Moreover, while DEA employees have told us that since 2019 it has been following new processes for documenting and tracking firearms pending destruction, these processes are not memorialized in official DEA policy.

More broadly, we found that the DEA does not have any official policy governing the storage, documentation, and safe handling of DEA employee issued firearms and firearm parts pending destruction. Although TRDF staff created an SOP memorializing some of TRDF’s practices for firearm destruction, the SOP has not been officially reviewed or approved. Further, we found that the SOP contains only limited guidance on the DEA’s destruction processes and lacks clarity in several respects. For example, the SOP does not specify whether firearms should be kept intact or dismantled prior to destruction. In addition, the SOP states that boxes of firearms should be moved to an armory after DEA gunsmiths inventory the firearms, but the SOP does not specify how long the inventory process should take or how the firearms are secured during the inventory. One of the steps of the SOP states: “Destruction Log serial numbers confirmed with [person’s first name] in firearms database.” However, this step does not identify the position of the person whose name is provided or what should be done if that person leaves the DEA or is otherwise unavailable.

Is it just me, or is it really going to be nice to see these folks having to clean up their behavior?

All my links: https://linktr.ee/RedneckThinker