Two Brothers Convicted of Making Guns for ISIS

(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

Few people in this country view ISIS as the good guys. Most of those who do are, well, probably not all that good themselves, at least by my estimation.

What’s more, it’s not like there are all that many people who haven’t heard of ISIS and could believably say they didn’t realize they’re terrorists.

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So when someone makes guns for them, one should feel free to assume that they not only knew what they were doing, they really didn’t have a problem arming literal and actual terrorists. Of course, we might also assume no one would be stupid enough to do it.

That last part is where you’d be wrong.

Two brothers will spend years in prison after officials say they manufactured and sold guns they believed would be used by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

Moyad Dannon, 25, and his brother, Mahde Dannon, pleaded guilty to “attempting to provide material support or resources, namely, firearms, to a designated foreign terrorist organization,” according to a Dec. 14 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana.

“My client is a bright young man with a lot of potential, and I hope that, once released from prison, he is still able to realize that potential because I think he has a lot to offer his community in a law-abiding and constructive manner,” Moyad Dannon’s attorney Jessie Cook said in an email to McClatchy News. An attorney for Mahde Dannon was not listed in court records.

In June 2018, the brothers came up with a plan to deliver stolen guns to a convicted felon working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the release. Between June and December of that year, the brothers sold the person “illegally obtained” guns, officials said.

The brothers started making untraceable “ghost guns” at about that time, too according to officials.

The two purchased gun parts online, assembled the parts into “fully-functioning, .223 caliber semi-automatic rifles” and sold them to an undercover FBI agent, officials said.

Moyad Dannon learned the potential buyer wanted to ship the guns to the Middle East for ISIS to use, prosecutors said. Still, the brothers agreed to make and sell at least 55 more fully automatic “ghost guns” to the buyer, according to officials.

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So we’ve got two brothers who decided to make “ghost guns” for both convicted felons and ISIS. The downside for them was that everyone they were selling guns to were actually working with the FBI.

Brilliant job, guys. Brilliant job.

Yet for me, this illustrates at least part of the stupidity of attempts to ban so-called ghost guns, which the White House is now trying to push states to do.

Yes, these two dipsticks bought kits for these guns, but even if you ban the kits completely, each component is going to be available as replacement parts for existing firearms. People can just buy the parts individually. The more industrious folks can probably use CNC machines to manufacture their own.

In other words, the only way these kinds of firearms will stop being made is just if people decide they don’t want to make them anymore.

Banning them doesn’t make them go away.

After all, if there were a hope in hell of that happening, we wouldn’t have people willing to make and sell these things to freaking ISIS, among other undesirables.

 

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