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Federal operation nabs nearly 43,000 illegal gun silencers shipped from China


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The New York Times
SOURCE: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/illegal-gun-silencers-china-rcna28505
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Summary

The effort by four federal law enforcement agencies, dubbed Operation Silent Night, has seized 42,888 illegally imported silencers and 4,868 firearms as of March, and has led to 204 arrests, according to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) report.In addition to seizing silencers as they come into the country, federal authorities have also shut down the websites that sell them and worked with officials in China to stop the manufacturing of illegal silencers, according to federal law enforcement officials.The operation “is really a gateway into other illicit activity,” said Robert Hammer, the special agent in charge of the Seattle field office for Homeland Security Investigations, a division of ICE.Officials continue to see shipments from China, but as the supply of foreign silencers slows because of the crackdown, the threat has evolved, said Stacey Whitehead, an inspector with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. It expanded to include the Postal Inspection Service, Homeland Security Investigations and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.“We have a deep concern about firearms, firearms parts and accessories moving through the mail stream,” Whitehead said.The people who are buying the silencers generally know they are breaking the law by buying them from a Chinese website and not registering them with ATF, Hammer said.“I have not seen an instance where somebody in a post-search interview that was really like, ‘Oh, I had no idea I couldn’t go onto this Chinese site and just order a silencer and it would show up at my house,’” he said.The silencers are sometimes sold using euphemisms such as “filters,” according to court filings in several criminal cases.

As said here by Joshua Eaton