Illegal guns continue to pour into New York via the Iron Pipeline

NEW YORK - The guns are here in New York City and they keep coming.

"90% of these guns don't come from New York. They come along I-95 — they come from states with lax gun laws," New York Attorney General Letitia James said at a recent gun buyback event in Queens.

The outcome of what those illegal guns are used for often results in devastating consequences.

"I'm sad in my heart as a mother who lost two kids to gun violence," said Jackie Rowe-Adams, the founder of the advocacy group Harlem Mothers S.A.V.E., created for grieving mothers like herself.

Illegal firearms come up Interstate-95. The trafficking operation is known as the Iron Pipeline. The route often treks weapons legally purchased in states like Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Those weapons get delivered illegally in big cities up and down the East Coast along the I-95 corridor.

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"There's an underground economy. It definitely facilitates gun violence in New York, despite your strong laws," said Daniel Webster, the director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.

No matter how strong gun laws are in New York and New Jersey, exploiting huge flaws in U.S. gun policy as a whole nationwide is not hard. That imperfection was highlighted in a 2015 arrest of Michael Bassier, a Brooklyn resident at the time, who authorities say trafficked weapons from Georgia to New York City. Investigators recorded part of his conversation about how he did it on a wiretap:

"Do you want to know what I do now? I sell guns," Bassier can be heard saying on the recording.

On it, he's just stepped off a bus to the city bragging to his ex-girlfriend about a duffel bag bulging with guns.

"I've got two MAC-10s, assault rifle(s), four handguns, and I'm walking through New York," he said.

He then explained the simplicity of his gun-running scheme from Georgia up the Iron Pipeline to New York.

"I'm selling them the right way and the wrong way. When I'm out of state, like in Atlanta and Georgia and all that, it's all legal, it's fully legal," he said. "But in New York, it's completely illegal. So when I bring [expletive] up here and sell it up here, that's illegal."

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Bassier admitted to transporting more than 112 guns, including 20 assault weapons, in a single year, making $130,000.

He is now serving a 17-year prison sentence.

"These are individuals who often just want to make a little money and are willing to take some risks," Webster said. 

He studies the issue at Johns Hopkins as closely as anyone in the country. He said gun runners like Bassier often rely on so-called straw purchasers to legally buy guns from dealers and gun shows in states where rules are relaxed.

"At a minimum, we need comprehensive background checks," Webster said. He said a federally mandated licensing system for acquiring firearms could make a difference.

"If we can do a good job of regulating sales and commerce of handguns, we will go a very long way in reducing gun violence in cities," he said.

But with no clear path to any bipartisan legislation in the U.S Congress, cities and states are left to tackle the bulk of the problem. 

One example is that gun buyback in Queens, held by Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, the attorney general, and the NYPD, who invited people to turn in firearms for cash. They secured nearly 80 weapons in just a few hours.

"These guns right here — they are never going to hurt anybody," Katz said.

In the last seven years, at least four NYPD officers have been killed by weapons originally purchased or stolen from gun shops down south.         

This summer, the violence and shootings are surging.

"At the same time, we have seen record gun arrests — probably a record in the last 25 years," NYPD Deputy Commissioner John Miller said.

The NYPD is now making a historic partnership with the ATF, essentially federally deputizing officers.

"So they can access that data [and] make arrests as federal agents — bringing those to federal court," Miller said.

That allows cops to quickly track guns used in city crimes to gun shops where they were purchased leading to who may have bought them — disrupting the first component of the pipeline. It is a significant but small piece in this web of violence that often results in the deaths of young Black men living in inner cities.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Rowe-Adams, the founder of Harlem Mothers S.A.V.E. She knows this all too well. She lost both her sons to gun violence over a 17-year span.

"We're going to have to take back our streets," she said.

Harlem Mothers S.A.V.E. started with just five members. That number is now up to 55.

"It's so many shootings, and it really takes a piece out of you," she said. "You get that call, that phone is ringing in the middle of the night. That phone is ringing early in the morning, saying your son just got shot or your son just got killed with an illegal gun."

Harlem Mothers S.A.V.E. is supporting new legislation, introduced by state Sen. Robert Jackson, that would increase penalties and prison sentences for gun trafficking in New York. Rowe-Adams started a petition on harlemmotherssave.org. It already has more than 2,000 signatures.

"There has to be a way that we can catch more of these guns coming in," she said.