While I’m a Second Amendment absolutist, I don’t like it when people try to export guns illegally. That’s largely because I don’t want the supply of firearms to be diminished for gun-buying Americans. Plus, the export laws deal with national security more than gun control, so that’s a different kettle of fish from pretty much everything else the feds do regarding firearms.
So when someone gets caught trying to traffic guns out of the country, I tend to celebrate it.
That’s especially true when the individual caught seems to be trying to arm the kind of people who want to hurt Americans, which is sure what it looks like with an Iraqi national who was just convicted for trying to export firearms to his home country.
A 54-year-old Iraqi national has been sentenced to federal prison for conspiring to violate gun export laws, according to Acting U.S. Attorney John G.E. Marck.
Hassan Al Gharawi was found guilty by a jury on one count of conspiracy to violate export control laws after a three-day trial on October 1, 2025. U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen sentenced Gharawi to 63 months in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release, and imposed a $5,000 fine.
From November 2020 to June 2021, Gharawi conspired with others to stockpile, conceal, and transport firearms in vehicle parts destined for Iraq. During the trial, evidence showed that Gharawi received two deliveries in 2020 and 2021, totaling approximately 77 firearms, which he stored in his home.
In 2021, federal agents witnessed Gharawi transporting the guns to a storage unit. Gharawi claims that he was doing this under duress, as some entity in Iraq was threatening his family that remained behind. The jury clearly didn’t buy that, and now he’s going to prison for the next five years plus.
Shipping guns across international borders is illegal, and the feds really do try to address this to some extent, though resources are often directed toward more stupid things like finding out how often ducks copulate or something, because that’s a whole lot more important than making sure firearm export laws are followed.
Anywho, I can’t help but think about how, if someone figured it was easy enough to ship dozens of guns to Iraq–a country with a ton of people who really, really want to kill Americans simply because we’re Americans–then just how difficult can it be to just cross the border into Mexico with them, even with federal authorities trying to stop them?
Everyone acts like the problem is the lawful gun trade here in the United States, but it sounds like there needs to be a lot more emphasis on preventing illegal exports in a general sense than what currently exists. Sure, they caught Gharawi, but how many others have been convinced to arm terrorists or criminal enterprises that haven’t been?
I want American guns to remain in America so that American gun buyers can purchase them. I want them available in case we need to resist a government turned tyrannical. I don’t want the worst people imaginable to have them instead, so maybe the ATF should have spent the last four years focusing on that instead of shutting down gun stores because they put the wrong state abbreviation in their paperwork.
Just a thought.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
Help us continue to report on and expose the Democrats’ gun control policies and schemes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Read the full article here
