America can add one more lingering effect of the COVID-19 pandemic. Easy access to government funds fueled fraudulent claims that heated up the illicit black market of firearms, especially by criminal gangs and illegal drug networks.
In other words, it wasn’t the lawful sale of a record number of firearms in 2020 and 2021 that was responsible for crime. It was government tax dollar giveaways without guardrails that criminals co-opted.
The low threshold to claim COVID-19 relief money from the federal government made it all too easy for criminal gangs like the Traveling Vice Lords and the Wild 100s to tap into free money. That money was used for crimes of illegal firearm straw purchases and even a murder-for-hire plot. Gun control groups blamed the firearm industry for the rising rates of violent crime during and following the COVID-19 pandemic. The truth is clearer now. Lack of oversight to ensure COVID relief funds weren’t fraudulently obtained is a contributing factor, along with soft-on-crime policies and elected officials who refuse to jail criminals.
Criminal Connection
Chicago Sun Times published the exposé of how the federal government’s plan to rescue the economy from collapse was a catalyst for skyrocketing black market gun profits. An Inspector General’s report from the Small Business Administration that oversaw the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and Economic Injury Disaster loan estimated that at least 17 percent of the $1.2 trillion handed out was obtained by fraud. That’s $204 billion.
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