Octogenarian Faces Federal Prison After Admitting He Aided Suspected Gun Traffickers

As Tom reported earlier today, Everytown has a new “report” out focusing on straw purchases that insinuates employees of Academy Sporting Goods have willfully turned blind eyes to individuals who are helping to traffic firearms. I won’t repeat all of Tom’s criticisms of the report here, but it’s at least worth noting that apparently none of the Academy employees who sold any of the 250 or so firearms that were apparently trafficked over a three year period have been charged with anything. 

That is not the case, however, for an 80-year-old New Hampshire man who was accused of obstructing a police investigation by warning suspected traffickers that they were under surveillance. Doug Mulligan admitted to leaving notes on several vehicles that read “ATF is watching you.”

Mulligan was employed by an FFL, which was a no-no given a decades-old felony conviction, and was caught on camera both possessing a firearm and purchasing a gun from a customer. According to a press release from the DOJ, Mulligan accepted a deal to plead guilty to one count of possessing a firearm by a prohibited person, and it looks like the obstruction charges were dropped entirely. 

“Despite knowing that he was a convicted felon and prohibited from possessing firearms, the defendant chose to disregard federal law,” said U.S. Attorney [Erin] Creegan. “Even more troubling, he used his position at a licensed firearms business to tip off individuals about federal law enforcement activity, undermining an active investigation into transnational, illicit firearms trafficking. Our office will continue to prosecute those whose actions enable criminals’ access to guns, and those who seek to interfere with law enforcement efforts to protect public safety.”

I’m somewhat surprised that the DOJ decided to offer a deal based on Mulligan pleading guilty to violating Section 922(g)(1) of federal statute, given that there’s a split in the appellate courts about whether that law is constitutional as applied to those convicted of non-violent offenses. Mulligan’s status as a prohibited person stems from two counts of receiving a stolen motor vehicle from 1976, and depending on the terms of the plea bargain his attorneys may be able to appeal his conviction on Second Amendment grounds. 

There appears to have been plenty of evidence that Mulligan engaged in obstruction of a law enforcement investigation, and he couldn’t mount any kind of legal defense based on his right to keep and bear arms if that had been the charge that remained as a result of the plea deal. The First Circuit Court of Appeals hasn’t taken a position on whether 922(g)(1) can be applied to those convicted of non-violent felonies or crimes punishable by more than a year in prison, so perhaps DOJ decided to roll the dice or structured the deal in such a way that Mulligan can’t raise a Second Amendment challenge on appeal. 

Either way, it seems to me that the bigger issue here is Mulligan’s attempt to alert potential gun traffickers that law enforcement was watching, not the fact that he possessed a firearm or even worked at a gun store a half-century after he was convicted of a couple of non-violent felony offenses. Even the DOJ’s press release says it was “even more troubling” than possessing a gun as a felon that Mulligan “used his position at a licensed firearms business to tip off individuals about federal law enforcement activity, undermining an active investigation into transnational, illicit firearms trafficking.” 

If that’s the case, then why let him off the hook for those actions? At a time when DOJ is getting ready to roll out its new pathway to rights restoration for convicted felons, it just seems odd to me that the U.S. Attorney would allow Mulligan to plead guilty to possessing a firearm as a prohibited person instead of holding him accountable for trying to help suspected gun traffickers get away with their crimes. 

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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