There has been quite a bit of buzz about the ATF shooting a man that they were serving a search warrant on. More details are coming to light. The ATF was investigating him for being an unregistered firearms dealer. It seems that he had bought at least 150 firearms between May 2021 and February 2024. That’s an average of more than a gun a week.
Those firearms included:
- 24 Glock Model 45
- 9 Fed Arms Model FR-16
- 9 Beretta 92A
- 7 North American Arms NA22
- 4 Glock Model 22
- 4 SAR9
- 3 ATI Omni
- 3 Glock Model 19
- 3 Glock Model 17
- 3 Beretta 92FS.
He bought them from Gunbroker and had them shipped to an FFL, who was charging him $25 for the transfer. So far, suspicious, but legal.
Then he would resell them at gun shows, sometimes within days of purchasing them.
The cops caught on to this when 3 guns showed up in traffic stops and were traced to him.
Looking into it further, they had seen him selling at gun shows without asking for ID, with a camera wearing undercover buying firearms from him, no questions asked. A gang member was arrested with a firearm that was traced to Malinowski less than three months after he bought it on Gunbroker.
OK, so now we know why he was being investigated. The ATF then did a sting purchase from him:
Malinowski was at the G&S Promotion Gun Show and one of the firearms that Malinowski was selling was only purchased 4 days before the gun show
He also had a Gunbroker account under the name bmalin123, and was selling through there. It also looked like he was driving around Little Rock and selling guns out of his car.
It’s fairly obvious to me that he was illegally dealing in firearms. This isn’t just a matter of a guy selling his private collection. Even as progun as I am, there is enough here for a valid search warrant, even if there isn’t enough for a conviction yet.
You can argue that the law requiring him to have an FFL is bogus, but that isn’t what this is about. You can’t blame the ATF for being overzealous on this one up to this point, they were enforcing the law as it is written in this particular case.
There are those who are attempting to argue that they should have arrested the guy while he was working his day job at the airport, instead of serving the warrant at 6 am at his home. I don’t have a problem with them serving the warrant there. That’s where the evidence was. This guy’s death was entirely of his own making. He likely wasn’t an innocent guy just selling his collection. He was dealing in firearms and selling to people that he knew were criminals.
I just can’t feel sorry for him, no matter how much I despise the ATF.
35 Comments
Karl Ushanka · March 22, 2024 at 9:00 am
Agree. And how much did he lose per transaction? Guns on GunBroker are priced by the market. Is the Little Rock market that starved that he could turn a profit after shipping, FFL fees, gas costs to gun shows, his time, etc??
Forget his motives. I’m tempted to question his intelligence.
Woody · March 22, 2024 at 9:04 am
On the choice were to arrest him, wouldn’t be better to arrest him at the airport which most likely a “gun free zone” as opposed to his residence where he had an unknown amount of guns?
Dead suspects are never allowed a defense and since shootings are always investigated by the LE agency the verdict is always “He shot first”.
Divemedic · March 22, 2024 at 12:24 pm
It wasn’t an arrest warrant. It was a search warrant.
Why would the ATF search the airport? The evidence that they were looking for wasn’t there, it was at the criminal’s house.
As to whether or not the shoot was a good one, I have always advocated for investigatory boards made up of common citizens to investigate police shootings. I remain convinced that this is the way to go.
Woody · March 22, 2024 at 3:33 pm
True, but they might not have released the warrant, but with the info provided in the search warrant there is reasonable cause to make an arrest. Their case must have been weak and they wanted more evidence prior to the 48 hour clock on bringing him in front of a judge.
D · March 22, 2024 at 11:12 am
> This guy’s death was entirely of his own making.
> I just can’t feel sorry for him, no matter how much I despise the ATF.
I do. I don’t give a crap what some dumb government statute says. Any gun law is a violation of “shall not be infringed”. Since the guy wasn’t in jail and the people he sold them to weren’t in jail, government has zero business being involved in this situation.
There was a time in this country that anyone 18 and over could buy a gun from a mail-order catalog or get one by opening a checking account at a bank doing a promotion.
Divemedic · March 22, 2024 at 12:23 pm
But that isn’t the case. If you choose to illegally deal in firearms, you choose to accept that you are a criminal and will be treated as such.
The law is what it is. Don’t like it? Lobby to have it changed.
The same goes for selling drugs, dealing in stolen property, or any one of a hundred different acts. Your foolish and rather childish naivety on the topic of crime isn’t the law in this country. If you have a problem with that, you don’t blame the IRS. Blame Congress. This is a law that was passed by them.
We in the gun community have been screaming for years that we don’t need new gun laws, all we have to do is enforce the ones already on the books. That is still true.
Unless you feel the need to start stacking bodies, in which case I ask what you are waiting for?
D · March 23, 2024 at 8:56 am
> The law is what it is. Don’t like it? Lobby to have it changed.
I handle it differently.
I just ignore unconstitutional laws.
I have a decent lawyer on retainer for when government decides to enforce unconstitutional “laws” on me.
I feel bad for people who get killed exercising constitutional rights.
Civil disobedience is a good thing.
If someone kicks in my door at 3 AM and shouts “Durkistani Police!”, I’m not going to just say “Oh, ok…I’m sure you’re legit” and wait to hopefully not get robbed, raped or killed by criminals pretending to be the cops. There have been plenty of videos of thugs pretending to be cops.
If I don’t make it, I would hope someone would be outraged that the government murdered me because I bought a few 15-round magazines last week in a state where they feel I should only be able to have 10.
I would have thought by now you’d realize that voting won’t change a damn thing. Even if I voted for a local politician who had one and only one campaign promise (say…to abolish stupid magazine limits)…and somehow this person got into office…he can’t just snap his fingers to change it. There are 48 other senators and 97 other representatives of which just over 50% in each group would have to decide to vote ‘yea’ followed by getting a liberal governor to sign it…or alternatively I’d have to get something like 67% of each group to vote for it. Or alternatively I’d have to get a referendum and get 51% of the voters that turn out to vote for it.
The point is, exactly zero of the people who passed the law were required to give a shit about my rights or the constitution to put this in place. It took nearly zero effort or personal responsibility to do so…but to fix it, I personally would be required to spend millions on legal fees, campaigns, donations, etc… It’s very lopsided.
> Unless you feel the need to start stacking bodies, in which case I ask what you are waiting for?
And how exactly would that end? I’d be dead or at the very least imprisoned….all the while Republicans would be tripping over themselves backpeddling to distance themselves from some crazy guy and saying “this guy’s death was entirely of his own making. I just can’t feel sorry for him, no matter how much I despise the unconstitutional ‘laws’ they passed. He should have voted harder.”
I’ll take a hard pass on fighting for a bunch of people who don’t give a crap about rights and suggest I engage in the same stupid political game that violated those rights in the first place. Instead, like I said, I’ll just ignore them and continue to live my simple life of farming and ignoring unconstitutional government bullshit.
Divemedic · March 23, 2024 at 9:06 am
Good luck, although I am willing to bet that you aren’t anywhere near the Internet badass you claim to be.
At the same time, if you don’t have the balls to stand up and defend your beliefs, then don’t demand that others take all of the risks to defend the rights that you don’t.
Here is the thing though- this raid wasn’t about someone who had a couple of normal capacity magazines. This was about a guy who was buying firearms and then illegally selling them on the black market to drug dealers, illegals, and gang members.
I can’t get worked up about a criminal arms dealer getting smoked, no matter if it was the ATF who shot him or not.
D · March 24, 2024 at 5:39 pm
> Good luck, although I am willing to bet that you aren’t anywhere near the Internet badass you claim to be.
Seeing as how my home has never been invaded at 3 AM, I have never been tested, and therefore there’s no proof. When the rubber meets the road, I like to think–and I hope I am able rise to the occasion to defend the lives of my family. But I’ll keep that phrase in mind the next time you talk about how you will defend yourself and your family.
> I can’t get worked up about a criminal arms dealer getting smoked
In time they’ll call you a criminal. Have you broken any of the billion federal laws you don’t know about today?
18 U.S.C. §1865 & 36 C.F.R. §2.15(a)(4). Hopefully you don’t ever take a pet with you to a wildlife refuge.
oldvet50 · March 23, 2024 at 8:49 am
I have to agree with you D, now that the federal courts have decreed that illegal aliens can legally possess firearms, ALL bets are off. I’d rather our homegrown crooks get firearms than the cartel/MS13 gang members about which we have no idea of their ‘conviction’ status.
Divemedic · March 23, 2024 at 9:07 am
That isn’t what the court case said. The court ruled that, in that particular case, the man couldn’t be imprisoned for owning firearms. The case has no implications beyond that one particular case. So to be more accurate, a Federal judge ruled that THAT particular illegal alien couldn’t be imprisoned for owning that particular firearm in that particular case.
Here is the thing though- this raid wasn’t about someone who had a couple of normal capacity magazines. This was about a guy who was buying firearms and then illegally selling them on the black market to drug dealers, illegals, and gang members.
I can’t get worked up about a criminal arms dealer getting smoked, no matter if it was the ATF who shot him or not. This isn’t a binary decision- it’s not a matter of supply our criminal gangs or supply illegal immigrant criminal gangs. No, it’s a matter of “get caught selling guns to criminals, get sent to jail.”
Defending this guy is no different than defending a drug dealer. I especially hate that I am put in the position of defending the assholes at the ATF.
W Wilson · March 23, 2024 at 1:16 pm
What about the people selling guns to the Mexican cartels? The doj hasn’t done anything about them. Oh , that’s right , it was the doj doing it. We have laws ,as you say , and they were broken.
oldvet50 · March 23, 2024 at 3:40 pm
In my 73 years on this planet I have never heard of a judge’s order to be that specific. I was under the impression that that was what a precedent is. Just like all suspects have to be read their rights, not just Mr. Miranda.
Divemedic · March 23, 2024 at 5:28 pm
You dont read many court cases, then. Most decisions are as narrow as the courts can make them.
Steve · March 22, 2024 at 11:51 am
Both sides at fault. Anyone with more than about 3 brain cells has to know there are immoral jerks willing to kill people for a paycheck, so I can’t really feel sorry for him. On the other hand, “just following orders” doesn’t cut it.
I say just convict and execute the agents, call it offsetting penalties, and call it a day.
Zarba · March 22, 2024 at 12:52 pm
Based on the documentation, looks like a clean case of illegal dealing.
I have little sympathy for the ATF, but dude had to know what he was doing was illegal. Given the number of guns involved, I don’t blame them for a 6AM raid; it’s a good chance he had plenty of guns in his home, and they had a search warrant. No reason to take a bullet for that guy.
Jonathan · March 22, 2024 at 12:58 pm
What they should have done (and also what they should have done in Waco) was arrest him in town, THEN serve the search warrant at his home.
Serving a warrant at a home at 6 am is pretty much guaranteed to cause problems, one or both directions.
I’ve read guidance for police on reducing violence (and court questions) and among them is to wait until daylight to execute warrants at a residence.
Shooter Calhoun · March 22, 2024 at 1:54 pm
A bud is a surrogate son of the local world glass gun shop owner and he buys a couple of new ones every month.
By the next month he gets bored with the latest models and buy/trade/sell for some more.
It is fun to try out all the weapons and he says I am the best civilian shooter he has ever seen.
The H&K cock squeezer (s/) was an odd one and the AK pistol which kicked like crazy and put off a cloud of smoke.
Ammo is expensive so no trying out the .50 Beowulf just yet.
Local gun shows at the state fairgrounds have a phalanx of cops at the entrance checking chambers and they also do background checks in their cars and at a table set up at the entrance.
Freud was right in his quote about anyone trying to disarm you and I am no fan of pseudo science psychology.
Dave · March 22, 2024 at 1:59 pm
I have a problem with a no knock raid. Criminals have already shown they will say “police!” to imitate a no knock raid, so there’s no way for the occupant of the house to know if it’s a real raid or a home invasion. Auditory exclusion is real. It is reckless at best, criminal at worse. I want to know what evidence they had that made them think a no-knock was the lower risk option. And no, the fact he fired on them is not enough because again, we can’t prove he knew it was ATF and not a criminal act. They could have setup a sting at the house and overwhelmed him when he answered the door or simply waited for him to leave for work and overwhelm him then. Have a sniper ready in case he gets frosty and decides to battle it out.
Chris Mallory · March 22, 2024 at 2:03 pm
The Constitutionally of the laws aside, this was a paperwork crime. A failure to fill out government forms and pay the fee. It should not have lead to a SWAT raid for a search warrant. There is a good cause to detain/arrest him at the airport then carry out the warrant. It would have removed him from his secured home and allowed the government unopposed access to the property where the “evidence” supposedly was. When you attack a man’s home with an armed force, he has every right to repel the attackers. PERIOD. But then some of the lowest of scum on the planet would not have gotten to play Navy SEAL and done the dynamic entry. About the only people on this earth lower than LEOs are chomos.
Don W Curton · March 26, 2024 at 12:05 pm
Hey, how else are mid-tier mid-wit ATF agents gonna score with the badge bunnies at the local bar if they haven’t been in at least one stack-up where things got frosty?
Fanboy · March 22, 2024 at 2:09 pm
I’ve noticed some shady stuff on GB and Craigslist. Like dudes selling gun parts on GB, but the receiver is clearly included, even though they’re selling it purely as parts. I saw a guy selling an expensive Italian shotgun on CL, but all you saw pictured was a shot target and a tiny part of the frame in the pic. The ad called it a “clay pulverizer.” And there are folks popping up on youtube firing full auto glocks and offering to sell the parts to you. No way this isn’t a setup.
Keep up the good work.
EN2 SS · March 22, 2024 at 3:46 pm
IMHO, how many here believe any GD thing a government employee tells them about any F’n thing? That warrant is what they’re showing now and since the dude is dead……
All federal agencies have shown themselves to be GD lying piles of shit, from the atf to fbi to cdc to all the rest, especially fuckjoebuyme and his puppet masters. Since clinton, demoncrap people would rather lie than tell any semblance of the truth about anything. Just one example, the fbi photo of secret documents scattered across the floor at Mar a Lago.
Prove me wrong.
neomunitor · March 22, 2024 at 5:41 pm
I call BS on the whole story. If he made $100/sale on 150 guns in 3 years, that’s 15k. For a guy pulling down 250k/year, that’s 5k/year extra. And he paid sales tax and shipping on that stuff from GunBroker. No way. I have an alternate scenario: He was working for the ATF for… reasons. He was selling stuff to disqualified individuals at their behest so that the ATF could get CIs or leverage on people or easy cases to close to bump up their statistics. He then made some noises about wanting out and the ATF decided they would tie up that loose end. Which they mostly did. Sort of like the ending of “Burn After Reading”. They’ll deal with the situation if he wakes up. Makes more sense than the fantasy of a guy making 250k/year selling a butt load of guns illegally at a loss, year after year.
anon · March 22, 2024 at 5:43 pm
I didn’t know the guy.
I’ve spent some time in & around Little Rock.
He made a decent 6 figure income in an executive position.
He looks like a nerd.
And I’m being told he was making (maybe) nickels & dimes selling guns
out of his his car in Little Rock?
I believe, like his brother states: ‘something stinks to high hell’.
it's just Boris · March 22, 2024 at 6:22 pm
I *ahem* won’t comment too strongly on the average purchase rate, although there are periods where that wouldn’t be … well, nevermind.
Anyway, the thing that would have told me he was looking to deal, rather than someone who came down hard and fast with the collector’s bug, is the number of repeats. Most collectors won’t, in my experience, buy more than one or two of exactly the same thing. (There are of course exceptions: making up matched sets, for instance, or if there are small variations of interest in the model line between years or generations.)
And, yes, I have also to wonder about the local market he was trying to sell into.
Bones · March 22, 2024 at 10:09 pm
The safe answer is to take him off outside of the home where the guns are. They had probable cause to arrest and search. Arrest, then go back to the home and search. ATF guy doesn’t get hurt, and suspect doesn’t get dead.
No, gotta breach, bang, clear, at 0600 and get in a shooting. I just don’t get it.
Anonymous · March 22, 2024 at 11:36 pm
You can’t blame the ATF for being overzealous on this one up to this point, they were enforcing the law as it is written in this particular case.
Yes, I most certainly can blame them. Legislators passing laws, executives signing them, and courts ignoring them don’t change the second amendment of the Bill of Rights.
We always wonder why the US has the problems that it has.
I don’t wonder, I know it’s because conservatives respect politicians more than the Bill of Rights.
Divemedic · March 23, 2024 at 8:02 am
Of course, there are also those who complain that that others aren’t taking all of the risks and doing all of the work in defending the rights of others, while they themselves do nothing:
“Those ATF agents are willing to lose their jobs, their livelihood, and everything else by following the law that the voters passed and the courts say is Constitutional, because some rando on the Internet believes differently. The rando, of course doesn’t take any of those risks, but demands that everyone else does.”
Anonymous · March 24, 2024 at 1:05 pm
> doing all of the work in defending the rights of others
In America, there is exactly no personal consequence for not voting, because the vote is secret. Therefore each voter had to take an optional, positive, conscious action to reduce the rights of others. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culpability “A person causes a result purposely if the result is his/her goal in doing the action that causes it”
“doing all of the work” makes the infringement of rights sound like some kind of completely legitimate and wholesome activity. Such as five men finding a woman in an alley and outvoting her. Better luck next election.
GuardDuck · March 23, 2024 at 11:53 am
After looking at the warrant, I’m confused.
It really doesn’t make sense for a guy making what he made to play illegal arms dealer for pennies.
But, assuming the warrant info is actually true – that’s a legit reason to arrest and search.
Of course an early morning no knock raid is bullshit. The entire and ONLY purpose for a no knock search warrant is to either capture a person that is a legitimate flight risk and/or to prevent the destruction of evidence – that being easily disposed evidence such as flushing drugs down the toilet.
It’s hard to flush a bunch of guns down the toilet.
There is no reason for almost any ATF search to be a no knock raid because of this. That was true when they fucked up and raided Waco. It’s true here as well.
TCK · March 25, 2024 at 2:17 am
“Evidence” provided by soulless inhuman Gestapo monsters is as worthless as its source.
Divemedic · March 26, 2024 at 9:19 am
But there isn’t any other evidence. That’s all there is, so you go with what you have.
EN2 SS · March 26, 2024 at 4:35 pm
To say it again, the guy is dead, the atf provides all the ‘evidence’, case closed.
Divemedic · March 27, 2024 at 7:19 am
Not a word from his family or friends to that effect, however. Not one iota of evidence or allegations that he was an innocent patsy. Not one statement to support that.
Comments are closed.