Keith sold recording tapes to the FBI & ATF in New York City deep under Manhattan in a copper mesh lined room. I think Keith worked for Memorex back in 1970s to 1999.
When I lived in Montgomery County I looked for old furniture & cheap Chinese made stuff at the Perkiomenville Auction & Flea Market.
Once just as I arrived in the outer parking lot about 500 feet from the Auction, PA State Troopers pulled up. The signal that the Troopers arrived got to the market before they could walk in. The Troopers were looking for guns.
When he left Coatesville to live in North Carolina, Keith gave me the ATF hat he wore in baseball games with the FBI. He said "don't wear it in public."
"I researched gun trafficking for four years for my book Blood Gun Money: How America Arms Gangs and Cartels. In the process I traveled from the biggest firearms trade show in the world, in Las Vegas, to the open air drug markets of Baltimore, to the mass graves of Mexico. The investigation left me staggered by the scale of the trafficking and by America’s political failure to take basic measures to stop it.
Between 2007 and 2019, more than 179,000 firearms were captured in Mexico and five Central American countries and traced to gun shops and gun factories in the United States. Mexico’s foreign ministry believes this is the tip of the iceberg, and estimates that more than two million guns crossed the Rio Grande over the last decade.
The weapons originate in the legal US gun market – the biggest in the world by far, with 393 million firearms in civilian hands, according to the last count. They then cross into a parallel black market through four main methods: a private sale loophole; straw buyers (people with clean records paid to buy guns); theft from gun shops; and the sale of parts to make un-serialized weapons, or “ghost guns”.
Traffickers take these guns from states with looser laws, such as Virginia and Georgia, to cities with stricter laws, including Washington and New York, which are suffering from sharp increases in gun violence. They also smuggle them south to Mexico, over the 2,000-mile border, hidden in cars and trucks.
In Florida, smugglers stash firearms in cargo ships that sail across the Caribbean and far beyond. “You go to a shipper and you drop off a box and you say what’s in there, ‘household goods.’ They don’t care,” said Steve Barborini, a former agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF. For US guns, this is a common route to Honduras."
MORE AT:
The Guardian
US-made guns are ripping Central America apart and driving migration north
An iron river of illegal guns flows from the US to Mexico, Central America, and across the hemisphere
Fri 16 Apr 2021 06.23 EDT
Keith Gargus lived in a home inside Valley Forge Park and commuted to New York when he was selling recording tapes to the FBI & ATF. The Perkiomenville Auction & Flea Market is on his on the way.
Keith moved to Coatesville, PA. He was very active working for the Coatesville PA Democratic Committee and the Election campaign for Barack Obama in the 2008 Election
He doesn’t like how he looks in the photo below. Keith is plowing for the Coatesville Community Garden we had in the Fifth Ward:
 |
| Keith with Ed Rendell |
“Kathy McDonnell has a colorful way of describing what could happen if the Castle Doctrine's expanded.
"What this bill does is basically create what I call the Dr. Seuss defense," said McDonnell, "You can shoot 'em in your car, you can shoot 'em on your roof, you can shoot 'em on the porch, you can shoot 'em just about anywhere, if you have a legal right to be there."
McDonnell is with the Philadelphia District Attorney's office, and is a Legislative liaison for the Pennsylvania District Attorney's Association, which represents all the DA's across the state. She said even a case like a drug dealer who shoots a rival could end up getting thrown out under the expanded law.”
Is this the Kieth Gargus who worked with Pete Housel in Tucson at the "Quick Erection" Construction Co?
ReplyDelete