Former Florida Jail Guard Arrested For Straw Buys

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The kind of folks I call anti-Second Amendment types often argue that they’re nothing of the sort. They typically say they support the Second Amendment, but they want some common sense laws on the books to stop criminals from getting their hands on firearms. They also tend to blame gun stores for every straw buy that happens, which creates a problem and illustrates how little they know about such things.

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You see, such buys are, for one thing, just one of the ways criminals get guns.

For another, it can be rather hard to determine who is committing a straw buy and who isn’t. Especially when it’s someone who worked in a position of trust.

A former Florida jail guard has pleaded guilty to buying firearms and immediately reselling them to someone who hadn’t passed a federal background check.

Kenyari Devaughnte Brewton, 26, pleaded guilty Tuesday in Ocala federal court to making a materially false statement during the purchase of a firearm and causing a federal firearms licensee to maintain false information in its official records, according to court records. He faces up to 15 years in prison.

According to the plea agreement, Brewton purchased multiple firearms from a Marion County gun dealer between March 2020 and April 2021. Brewton certified on each firearm transaction form that he was the “actual transferee/buyer” of these guns. But he actually purchased the firearms on behalf of another person and never intended to keep them, prosecutors said.

Brewton was caught after a .40 caliber Glock he’d purchased six days before was used in a homicide.

Brewton was still a jail guard when this happened. That’s a pretty high level of trust, all things considered. There was absolutely no reason to deny Brewton a firearm.

And yet, here we are.

The problem is that people are people. Some will follow the rules and others won’t. Those that won’t follow them will do what they wish. If you put up roadblocks, they’ll find ways around them, often by recruiting those who haven’t been caught breaking any rules yet.

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“But if you made it so the authorities could deny gun licenses…”

Do you really think a county sheriff would tell one of his jail guards that he wasn’t trustworthy enough for such a permit? Really?

I mean, if he found him that untrustworthy, why is he working in the jail in the first place? Of course he’d get approved for such a permit…and the exact same thing would have happened.

The truth is that the only way you’re going to keep bad people from having guns is to completely remove guns from the equation. Make it so no one could get guns in any way, shape, or form.

That, however, is impossible.

So, it’s far better to at least make sure the good, decent people have the means to defend themselves if they end up in a bad situation. That’s what people like us fight for.

Meanwhile, every rule the anti-Second Amendment types push just makes the business of straw buys that much more lucrative.

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