Feds, state authorities charge 41 with gunrunning, weapon possession, other crimes as part of 2-month crackdown
The man, later identified as Eddie Arguelles, took off on the scooter, court records show, only to be arrested a few minutes later. Police records allege that the 20-year-old had a gun on him: a loaded, black .40-caliber Glock pistol with an extended magazine attachment and a switch conversion device.
Arguelles, 20, faces federal charges of machine gun possession alongside state-level felony charges already brought against him. He is one of 41 defendants who have been arrested in a two-month crackdown on illegal guns and switches, federal authorities announced Tuesday.
Switches turn ordinary handguns into fully automatic weapons that can fire dozens of rounds each time the trigger is pulled. Federal officials said in a news release they'd recovered 171 weapons and 64 switches during the effort, which Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling said was meant to combat the 'proliferation' of the devices in the city. According to the news release, authorities traced 'a significant number' of the recovered weapons to violent criminal activity that took place in and around Chicago over the last eight years.
Among the 18 federal defendants arrested as part of the push is Melvin Doyle, the father of drill rapper Mello Buckzz. Doyle was charged with gun possession last month in a case unrelated to a drive-by rifle attack that apparently targeted people attending his daughter's album release party and led to one of the worst mass shootings Chicago has seen in recent memory. Two minors are also among the accused at the state level, according to the news release.
Most of the federal charges allege machine gun possession or firearm possession by a felon, the news release stated. Defendants at the state level face charges of armed violence, gunrunning and machine gun possession among other allegations.
Federal prosecutors, Chicago police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives, the Cook County state's attorney's office, and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul's office were all involved with the push, per the news release.
Though Chicago is currently seeing a dip in violent crime after a spike during the COVID-19 pandemic, how to address persistent gun violence remains a major theme of city and state politics.
Cook County State's Attorney Eileen O'Neill Burke has spent much of her first few months in office seeking to take a tougher stance on gun crimes and last winter directed prosecutors to seek prison sentences for every felony case involving machine gun-type weapons. That order met a warm reception from Snelling and concerns about 'mass injustice' from Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell.
Former U.S. Attorney John Lausch called conversion switches a matter of utmost concern.
'Machine guns pose a dangerous threat to public safety and have no place on Chicago-area streets,' Lausch said in 2020, just as switches were beginning to flood the black market.Authorities have recovered more and more weapons with switches since 2019, according to ATF data provided to the Tribune by the state's attorney's office. In 2023, Chicago-area authorities recovered 564 such weapons and 604 in 2024 — up from 40 in 2019.
Nationwide, according to the National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment, the number of switches recovered has increased by almost 800%.
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