Three men were arrested in Cobb County on federal weapons charges last month after authorities say they were caught modifying and attempting to sell more than 20 fully automatic ghost guns.
Two of the suspects, who are local to Cobb, met at a Marietta restaurant in early June for the sale of five ghost guns, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia Ryan K. Buchanan said in a news release. The alleged buyer then sold those guns to undercover FBI agents.
The two Cobb suspects later met a third man from North Carolina at the same Marietta restaurant for a larger deal involving 16 more ghost guns and parts to make them fully automatic, Buchanan said. Before the deal could be completed, all three were arrested.
The operation “surgically removed” the illegal weapons from the metro Atlanta area, according to a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Jelani Kazmende, 38, of Marietta, and Wiley Martin, 42, of Acworth, were identified as the two local suspects involved in the first gun sale, according to Buchanan. The third man, 62-year-old Robert Louis Jeffords, of Forest City, North Carolina, was arrested alongside them June 16 while carrying 17 drop-in auto sear devices, which are gun modifications that allow multiple rounds to be fired with a single trigger pull, Buchanan said.
The five guns Martin allegedly sold to FBI agents earlier in the investigation had already been modified with auto sear devices, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
“Equipped with large capacity magazines, illegal machine guns like those allegedly transported, possessed and sold by these defendants present immediate danger to our community,” Buchanan said.
The investigation began June 2 when Kazmende is accused of selling five privately manufactured ghost guns to Martin, who was on probation after multiple felony convictions, Buchanan said.
The U.S. Department of Justice defines ghost guns as firearms that are assembled or produced without a serial number by a person who is not a licensed firearms manufacturer.
Martin then sold those five guns, each equipped with an auto sear device, along with a sixth traditionally manufactured, fully automatic pistol to multiple undercover FBI agents, Buchanan said.
Later in June, Kazmende and Wiley met Jeffords in Marietta for the much larger sale, according to Buchanan. The three men removed 16 more ghost guns from Jeffords’ truck, and Jeffords separately carried 17 more auto sear devices, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.
According to Buchanan, Martin intended to sell the new ghost guns once they had been modified.
Kazmende, Martin and Jeffords have all been arraigned on federal charges of dealing firearms without a license, possession of machine guns, possession of unregistered firearms and conspiracy.
“With distressing regularity, we see the damage that criminals can inflict on our communities with weapons of war,” FBI Atlanta special agent Keri Farley said in a statement.
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