With Assistance from Everytown Law, D.C. and Maryland Sue Three Gun Stores for Facilitating Illegal Gun Trafficking

Everytown Law partners with the Attorneys General for the District of Columbia and Maryland to sue three Maryland gun stores for their allegedly unlawful gun sales, which endangered the Washington, D.C. metro area. 

Washington, D.C. – The Attorneys General for the District of Columbia and Maryland, with Everytown Law as co-counsel, have sued Engage Armament, United Gun Shop, and Atlantic Guns for facilitating the illegal distribution of firearms in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The lawsuit alleges that each gun store engaged in repeated straw sales which fueled the illegal distribution of firearms throughout the region, including by a prolific straw purchaser who trafficked more than two dozen handguns in 2021.

Straw sales occur when a dealer transfers a firearm to a buyer who is actually purchasing the firearm for a third party, referred to as the “true buyer,” typically someone who could not pass a background check themselves. Firearm dealers are responsible for being familiar with straw purchasing indicators and have a responsibility to decline a sale when there is reason to believe that an individual is not the true buyer. 

As is often the case with straw sales, many of the gun sales identified in the Complaint resulted in firearms being transferred to dangerous individuals, including a District resident with prior violent felony convictions. At least nine of these firearms have already been recovered in connection with crimes in Washington, D.C. and its Maryland suburbs. The Complaint alleges that these stores put profits over safety by ignoring red flags that are indicative of straw purchasing, such as multiple, close-in-time purchases of the same or similar firearms by the same individual. Through this lawsuit, D.C. and Maryland seek to hold the stores accountable for their violations of state and federal laws against the facilitation of straw purchases and to prevent future unlawful sales. 

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