Within days of the Boston Marathon bombing last year, Tamerlan Tsarnaev used a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun to kill an MIT security officer and to critically wound a Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority officer. He had the gun, a black Ruger P95, in his hands during a shoot-out with police in Watertown, Mass. on April 19, 2013, and he ultimately threw it at officers before he was killed.
The Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday that the gun has been traced back to a gang in Portland, Maine.
According to the Times, the weapon was originally purchased legally in 2011 at a Cabela’s store in Maine by a man named Danny Sun Jr., a Los Angeles native living in a Portland suburb. Sun was arrested on May 1 last year, on a warrant related to a traffic case. But government sources told the Times that Sun was questioned about the gun, and told police he had given it to a man named Biniam Tsegai, an immigrant from Eritrea with a long rap sheet who goes by the name “Icy.”
On May 23, 2013, Tsegai was arrested on a warrant connected to a 2009 robbery, and he was later charged with conspiracy to distribute and possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine, according to the Times.
That’s as far as the gun’s trail goes.
But according to the Times, authorities believe that Tsarnaev’s ties to illegal drug trade in Maine helped pay for his trip to Chechnya and Dagestan in early 2012, where he reportedly radicalized.
Tsarnaev’s younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, is facing 30 federal charges for his alleged role in the bombing.
And the drug connection, in turn, ties in with the Waltham murders. Very interesting.
Sean Collier was an MIT Police Officer. He was not a security guard. This comment is not to disparage security guards - but to give Officer Collier a name, and proper honor.
They can track all sorts of other things, but their “trail” on a weapon is “fuzzy” somehow??? Rather than scoop up everything in creation in today’s electronic age why not work on keeping better track of something that CAN KILL SOMEONE?
Sorry, but I’ve lived all over the world. The Nations who closely track weapons are no less “Free” because some extremist can’t get hold of a gun. Anywhere in the UK or in Oz, this kind of thing just does not happen frequently.
When someone there owns a gun or uses it to commit a crime, the police worry just as much about that gun as they do the suspect. I simply cannot understand why in this case the gun’s owner (original or otherwise) was not made to surrender it to a competent holding authority once he was convicted of illegal activity. And if he sold it legally, why is there no record (and no responsibility) for this too?
We can have gun ownership. No problems, no argument. But the ways in which we traffic in guns must change. GPS can help us find cell phones,iPads, and missing kids. Why not firearms? Doing so would not impair responsible ownership of firearms, or their lawful usage. But when guns go wrong, because people go wrong, we should be able to track firearms, and quickly, before someone pays for someone else’s “freedom” with their blood.
There must be a balance point. To those who screech at the top of their lungs that even looking for that point is a violation of freedom, I say this: Your irrational fear that someone will take your guns away is superseded by the saving of one single innocent life. No responsible gun owner wants to contribute to crime or the spilling of innocent blood. There is common ground on this issue. I think we ought to ignore the screeching voices, and work to find that common ground.Every day that solutions are denied, someone dies.
Well the Waltham triple involved someone selling “rich guy pot”(kinda stuff where fat cats used to proudly proclaim they were smoking an expensive imported cigar) versus the crap you’d buy on the street or Dzhokhar’s stuff
While it’s all drugs - at those different prices you just have different criminals
A well regulated militia . . .