The Gun King

[Screen Capture, The Marshall Project]

The Gangster Disciple opens his phone and thumbs through some of the pictures on his message app: Glocks, Smith & Wessons, an AK-47, all arranged neatly on coffee tables and in dining rooms, five in one shot, seven in another, 15 in another. There’s even an old cowboy revolver with a wooden handle. “This is just from the last week,” he says. He’s been saving them up for me.

“What is that?” I ask him. “A Colt?”

“Something like that,” he answers.

I point at a black tactical weapon, the kind soldiers and SWAT teams carry. “What’s that?”

“An M4.”

“And these are all being offered to you?”

He nods. “Mmm-hmm.”

John H. Richardson, writing for The Marshall Project, shares the story of a middle-class college student from the Chicago suburbs who used Facebook to sell firearms to gangsters. But was he a kingpin or a scapegoat? Read the complete Amazon Original Story HERE.