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Why do so many people who should not have guns have them?
By Joe Gorman
YOUNGSTOWN
Quentin Jones had been out of prison for just 90 days when police pulled him over last Wednesday for driving with no lights on. Officers found a loaded 9 mm handgun in his car.
The case is all too familiar to police and others in the criminal justice system.
Jones, 27, had done six years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of involuntary manslaughter in 2011 in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
He had a prior conviction for carrying a concealed weapon before he was convicted on the manslaughter charges. As a result, he wasn’t allowed to have a gun then.
Yet, three months after being released from prison for his responsibility in two deaths, he was caught on the streets with a gun.
The problem is not uncommon: People who are not allowed to have a weapon can get one easily, and they are more afraid of being without a gun than of any legal ramifications.
The reasons often come down to protection, says Guy Burney, head of the city’s Community Initiative To Reduce Violence, or CIRV, program, which works with people involved in criminal activity or who may be lured to crime to try and get them out of that lifestyle.
Burney said many people live in dangerous areas or put themselves in dangerous situations. In either case, they carry guns to protect themselves.
“If I can’t be where it’s safe all the time, then my thought process is I have to protect myself,” Burney said.
Ian, whose surname is being withheld by The Vindicator, is a member of the CIRV program. He has been arrested on charges that ban him from owning a gun.
He said he started carrying a gun when he was 15 because of where he lived and the people with whom he associated.
“Why was it necessary to have a gun? Because I knew what I was doing in the streets, and there’s consequences to everything you do,” Ian said.
Ian said he got in trouble as a juvenile on charges that would ban him from having a gun. When he turned 18, he had no chance to get a gun legally. He knew if he wanted a gun, he would have to find other ways.
For such people, CIRV tries to find ways to help them change their lifestyle. CIRV works to get people access to employment and social services.
Ian said he was around guns while growing up on the South Side, and he decided he needed one at 15.
“I got used to it. I know what they do,” Ian said. “I know they could be used for good, like protection. Or they could be used for bad.”
Of the 131 felony gun charges filed in municipal court in 2017, 60 of those were for people who are not allowed to own a firearm because of a conviction. The charge is known as having a weapon under disability because the person has a disability – a prior conviction – that bars them from owning a firearm.
In 2016, 54 charges out of 110 felony weapons charged filed in municipal court were for felons in illegal possession of a firearm. In both years, that was the No. 1 felony gun charge filed in court.
In 2017, police took reports for more than 400 guns, the majority of them involved in criminal activity. In 2016, police took 390 gun reports.
Bob Miller, head of the Youngstown office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said someone not allowed to have a gun has plenty of ways to get one.
He said there is always the street or the underground, where people can purchase weapons on the sly or weapons are passed around from person to person.
There are also straw purchases, where someone who can legally buy a gun goes to a gun shop, fills out a background check that they pass, then either gives the gun to someone who is not allowed to have it or sells it to them.
People can also go to gun shows and buy from unlicensed dealers selling a private collection. Although they are prohibited from selling a gun to someone who is barred from having one, unlicensed dealers are not required to perform a background check, Miller said.
Ian said it is not difficult to find a gun if one knows who to get it from, and he said that was one of the keys to him getting one. He said you needed a “connection,” or someone who knew how to get a gun, no questions asked. From there, the procedure is simple, he said.
“You get them the money, they wipe it off, you shoot it, you check it out, and if you like it, you take it,” Ian said.
Ian said one important caution is to ensure you don’t get robbed by the person selling you the gun.
Burney said from most of the conversations he has with people in the program, especially younger ones, they are more afraid of what might happen to them if they don’t have a gun than whatever the law might do to them.
“It’s not about law enforcement, necessarily,” Burney said. “It’s what’s going on in everyday life.”
Detective Sgt. Ed Kenney, who has been on the force for 17 years and earned numerous awards for seizing guns, said he agreed some people find themselves in situations where they think they need a gun even if they are not allowed to have one.
“Today’s suspect is tomorrow’s victim and vice versa,” said Kenney, who has worked patrol on the South Side the majority of his career and is now a patrol supervisor for the South Side.
It’s not just where you live that affects someone’s decision to carry a gun, Burney said. It is also who they hang out with and where they are going that factors in whether someone should take a gun with them.
“What I hear more it’s just about protection, or being around without that type of protection is dangerous,” Burney said. “So what we say is maybe we need to look at these behaviors that put you in these positions.”
In Quentin Jones’s case, he originally had been charged with two counts of murder in the deaths of Jasmon Reeder, 19, of Superior Street, and Oscar Teague, 56, of Wirt Street on Aug. 6, 2011, but he entered into an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to two counts of voluntary manslaughter.
Prosecutors said Jones showed up at the Wirt Street house on the North Side, which was being used to sell drugs, carrying a rifle and exchanged words with another man. The two men began firing at one another, leaving Teague and Reeder dead in the cross-fire.
The man Jones was arguing with also pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges for the deaths of Teague and Reeder and a third man in an unrelated shooting death.
After last week’s arrest, Jones is in the Mahoning County jail on $40,000 bond on charges of improper handling of a firearm in a motor vehicle, being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of cocaine.
Ian said whenever he has run into police, he always has told them he had a gun if he was carrying one. He said not only did he not want to get in more trouble by trying to hide it, but he did not want to escalate a situation that could lead to him getting shot.
Ian has been in CIRV for about a year and said he likes it. He has a steady job, a child, and said while he is trying to leave his old life behind, he thinks people need to know what it is like for people who grew up like him.