Kevin Dawson of Ooltewah was arrested Wednesday and charged with violating federal weapons laws. Normally, such a routine arrest would attract little attention. Not this time.
Dawson, police say, traded guns with Jesse Matthews, a felon later charged in the shooting death of Chattanooga Police Sgt. Tim Chapin on April 1, 2011. That transaction exposes the dangers of current loopholes in gun laws that routinely allow private individuals to buy, sell and trade guns at shows without the background checks and record-keeping required at licensed retail shops. That makes the case far more newsworthy than usual in a community still struggling to cope with the death of Sgt. Chapin.
There’s nothing in the federal indictment to suggest that a weapon Dawson traded to Matthews was used by the man charged in the police officer’s death. Rather, the federal indictment charges Dawson with “engaging in the business of importing, manufacturing, or dealing in firearms without a federal firearms license, and in the course of such business to ship, transport, or receive any firearm in interstate or foreign commerce.” He’s also charged with the transfer or possession of a machine gun.
Those charges, and any additional ones that might be placed, will be adjudicated in federal court. There will be no such hearing to address current laws that permit the easy transfer of dead-ly weapons from individual to individual and the easy flow of weapons from state to state that undercover officers meticulously documented in Dawson’s indictment. But that’s the core underlying problem behind so many crimes.
Dawson had been told by federal agents in the past that he should seek a federal firearms license “because of his apparent frequent and consistent firearms sales,” but he continued to wheel and deal without one. Agents reported that he sold guns of all sorts, even when purchasers seemingly made it clear that they would transport their purchases across state lines.