The report found multiple inconsistencies casting doubt on these accusations; for example, some sellers mentioned by Russian media posted manipulated images of Syrian weapons to pass them off as Ukrainian. Just months after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, rumors began spreading online that Ukraine sold weapons provided by the United States and other Western countries on the black market to various militant and criminal groups. “Those guns are now in the illegal market and being used as crime guns, typically,” Crowley says. Some of these guns were stolen from their legitimate owners and resold, others were bought legally by Canadians and then offered for sale illegally for a profit. “It’s Toronto-specific that the crime guns, that the majority of them are domestic, predominately through straw purchasing,” Saunders says. A recent search for keywords including gun, Canada, Ontario and Toronto got 25 hits.
BBC News Services
Our online gun store offers only brand new firearms and equipment, rigorously tested for quality and reliability. Purchase from our extensive collection, including handguns, shotguns, rifles, self-defense weapons and military weapons online, with the assurance of safety and security in every transaction. The global black market for guns continues to thrive, driven by smuggling networks, unregulated 3D-printed firearms, and weak regulations. These weapons fuel violence, crime, and conflict, posing significant challenges to public safety and global security.
- To further examine this topic, our analysts conducted an extensive survey of vendors trading on the darknet in weapons, drugs, and human trafficking.
- 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.
- Jump, the other straw purchaser, pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators.
- Giffords Law Center works in all 50 states to change policies and challenge injustice.
- 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.
- Our platform simplifies the process for purchasing guns for sale even in regions with strict regulations.
Silk Road (marketplace)
Gun violence is a complex problem, and while there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, we must act. Our reports bring you the latest cutting-edge research and analysis about strategies to end our country’s gun violence crisis at every level. Some states, including California, Connecticut, Maryland, and Massachusetts, have additional strong laws that may be used to prosecute firearms traffickers, as described below. With Pond’s help, the ATF set up a sting operation last October where an undercover agent posed as a would-be straw purchaser and struck a deal with Villarreal to buy a dozen pistols for $5,800.
Summary Of Federal Law
In 11 percent of cases, the criminal had someone else buy a gun for them – known as a straw purchase – while an additional 15 percent got guns from a friend or relative. Some 12 percent of weapons found on a crime scene had been brought there by someone else. But what rarely makes a blip on the news cycle are the individual acts of gun violence that permeate the social fabric – with almost 500,000 violent crimes committed with a gun annually, according to the National Institute of Justice. 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.
Silk Road 20
The cyclical exchange allowed Compaore the ability to deny directly sending arms to Sierra Leone. The report ordered by Attorney General Merrick Garland is the first in-depth analysis of firearm trafficking investigations in more than 20 years. It examined more than 9,700 closed ATF firearm trafficking investigations that began between 2017 and 2021. Firearms trafficking is when guns are purposely moved into the illegal market for a criminal purpose or possession. The report ordered by Attorney General Merrick Garland is the first in-depth analysis of firearm trafficking investigations in more than 20 years.
Impact On Global Security
Universal background checks are essential to close deadly loopholes in our laws that allow millions of guns to end up in the hands of individuals at an elevated risk of committing violence each year. In response, a lawyer for Armslist issued a statement to the news sites that said the company “fully complies” with all laws and regularly assists law enforcement. “The gist of the opposition to Armslist lies in opposition to the private ownership of firearms,” the statement said. Freshtools is a unique marketplace in that it does not only provide the stolen data, but it allows criminals to purchase MaaS which can cause further damage to the victims. It is one of the most active and up to date markets and always provides new and updated malware and data.
Claims About Ukraine’s US Weapons In Syria, Gaza And Mexico
The relationship between drugs and weapons is corroborated by both research from the government and other non-profit organizations. On average, DarkOwl analysts found that the prices of firearms for sale on the darknet were the same or lower than what the same products cost on surface web sites. However, in most cases darknet traded weapons were not significantly lower than prices advertised in the surface web. Using the darknet, deep web, and high-risk surface web data, DarkOwl analysts discovered multiple arms-centric marketplaces, vendor shops, and other classified-style advertisements for the sale of illegal firearms on the darknet. Gun traffickers transfer guns from legal commerce to illegal commerce and are “considered to be violent criminals,” the official said.
No FFL, C&R, Or Any License Is Required To Posses, Transport, Buy Firearms
Gun trafficking is the process by which guns enter the black market and end up being used in crimes, while straw purchasing is a tactic where a person buys a gun on behalf of someone else, who is usually ineligible to purchase it. In contrast, Europe accounts for 23.6 percent of the gun sales, which is unsurprising given that most European countries have stricter gun-control laws than the US. In Germany, for example, anyone under the age of 25 is required to pass a psychiatric evaluation before buying a gun.
- One told the programme “I feel much safer online than doing transactions in the real world. I used to sell drugs in the real world. Nowadays I almost strictly use the dark web for any drug transaction.”
- 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.
- Getting access to the dark web depends on users downloading freely available software, based on peer-to-peer file-sharing technology, which effectively scrambles the location of users and dark web websites.
- Police also say 3D printers and other devices are being used to either make guns, or create parts that turn some firearms into automatic weapons capable of firing many more rounds a minute.
- The research was based on similar methodologies to those previously used to analyze the dark web drug trade, which take scraped data from marketplaces typically accessed through the Tor network.
The feds got a warrant and tracked Villarreal using the GPS on his phone as he traveled from McAllen to Oklahoma City. Indeed, in its recent Serious Organised Crime Assessment, the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) pointed to the dark web as a threat in the country’s battle against illegal firearms. (The NCA, Home Office, and Metropolitan Police provided testimony and interviews for the report too). “The volume can be considered sufficiently high to be cause for concern for policy makers and law enforcement agencies” the report reads. WizardShop has solidified its status as one of the best data stores in the dark web by providing an impressive quantity of quality data as well as providing a trustworthy, easy to use interface allowing criminals easy and secure buying and selling. The first of its kind, a report from RAND Corporation details the ever-expanding role of the dark web in facilitating the sale of firearms, ammunition, and explosives.
No Evidence Ukraine Sold US Weapons To Mexican Cartels, Militant Groups
“In that time a handgun could easily go through four or more owners,” said Agent Mulham. ATF data compiled by the Wilson Center, which provides nonpartisan counsel to Congress, shows most illicit weapons seized in Mexico can be traced to Southwest border states; Texas alone accounts for 38% of firearms found in Mexico traced back to the United States. Supreme Court is considering a lawsuit brought by Mexico against American gun manufacturers over their alleged complicity in weapons smuggling at the border. Snopes readers also asked via email whether Ukraine sold American weapons on the black market or to various militant or criminal groups, including Hamas, Syrian rebel groups and Mexican drug cartels. Winkel says years of sales records are already kept by retailers, and yet authorities aren’t effectively using that information to quickly flag straw buyers. “For whatever reason, the amount of time it takes for law enforcement to identify a straw person is too long.”
When ATF agents knocked on his door, Pond confessed he’d been “straw purchasing” or buying guns on Villarreal’s behalf. Those seven guns became part of an investigation by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), which traced the Reynosa weapons and dozens of others back to their original buyers in Oklahoma City. The trail led to two men who were using the web, including a site called Armslist—the so-called Craigslist of Guns—to find whatever Villarreal wanted. Guns may be small-fry when compared to the overall dark web trade, and especially that of narcotics—the 811 listings the researchers analyzed made up only 0.5 percent of all item listings scraped from the markets—but this space of black market weapons is probably larger than many may think. Based on our observations from analysis on dark web data using Lunar, we’ve identified the top 7 marketplaces on the dark web in 2025. We developed Lunar to monitor the deep and dark web, including dark web marketplace sites.
By providing an avenue for unregulated transactions, this website not only undermines the efforts of law enforcement agencies but also fuels the proliferation of illicit firearms in the hands of criminals. The consequences of such unrestricted access to weapons are dire, as it poses a grave threat to public safety, perpetuates violence, and fuels global instability. The existence of Black Market Guns is a stark reminder of the vulnerabilities that exist within the online realm.
