(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The DOJ Inspector General issued a notice to the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration that they’re not properly disposing government-issued firearms, after local police recovered a “ghost gun” that was made with DEA gun parts.
According to the DOJ-OIG, a local police department arrested someone last year and found a privately made firearm, also known as a ghost gun. Police traced the serial number of the slide and barrel of the ghost gun to the DEA. The DOJ-OIG then launched an investigation, of which the results were announced Wednesday.
“According to DEA records, the slide and barrel were part of a DEA employee issued firearm that had been destroyed over three years earlier,” the DOJ-OIG said in its Wednesday report.
🚨Major scandal🚨 DEA-issued firearms parts were stolen and turned into ghost guns.
The DEA can't account for all these guns, which were stolen because they were just placed in a bin in the middle of an unsecured Quantico facility pic.twitter.com/v3UvTBKrnl
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) October 17, 2024
During its investigation, the DOJ-OIG found that the DEA and FBI both destroy government-issued firearms by separating the slide and barrel from the rest of the firearm, and placing them in open bins in a gun-cleaning room that was collocated at the DEA and FBI training academies in Quantico, Virginia.
“The OIG further learned that the gun cleaning room was accessible to thousands of employees and contractors at Quantico, including FBI and DEA armory employees, FBI and DEA academy trainers and students, cleaning staff, maintenance contractors, and others,” the DOJ-OIG’s report continued.
“Because the gun cleaning room was in a shared building that also held the Quantico cafeteria, security control measures were limited to a Quantico access card provided to every individual that had access to the grounds at Quantico. There were no safeguards to ensure that the location where the slides and barrels were stored was secured, document who had access to the location or DEA property, or document when the slides and barrels were destroyed,” the report said.
The DOJ-OIG added that only “some” FBI employees destroy firearms in the manner described above. Others said they never separated the slides and barrels of firearms from their frames, the report said.
According to the report, the DEA and FBI justified their actions by saying that they considered only the frames and receivers of employee-issued firearms as necessary to safeguard in a secure vault prior to destruction.
But the DOJ-OIG explained why that’s incorrect.
“This is problematic given that slides and barrels can be attached to compatible frames or receivers and end up in the hands of criminals. Further, although the slides and barrels are not considered firearms in themselves, they contain serial numbers that identify their origin and implicate the DEA or FBI when recovered,” the DOJ-OIG explained.
The DOJ-OIG recommended that the DEA and FBI update their policies for firearms disposal. Both departments agreed.
However, it appears that there may be other ghost guns with DEA parts. According to the DOJ-OIG report, the DEA conducted an inventory of several hundred employee-issued firearms intended for destruction in 2019—and later found that 100 of those firearms were unaccounted.
“The DEA ultimately concluded that the 100 firearms were destroyed based on an unofficial spreadsheet created by a DEA employee; however, there was no official documentation to confirm this conclusion was accurate,” the DOJ-OIG noted.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
