A 29-year-old Denver man was sentenced Friday to five years in prison after he agreed to buy automatic and semi-automatic guns for an undercover ATF agent and a confidential informant whom he believed were prohibited from buying guns.
U.S. District Judge William Martinez sentenced Kenneth Allen Francis on Friday to federal prison following a July jury trial in which Francis was convicted of three counts including twice attempting to sell weapons to undercover agents, according to a news release by Acting U.S. Attorney Bob Troyer and ATF Special Agent in Charge Ken Croke.
“Francis knew he was breaking the law. He didn’t care. And he didn’t care about the lives he would have put at risk by circumventing the law and providing guns to known violent felons, sex offenders and criminals guilty of domestic abuse,” Croke said in a statement.
Francis had posted a YouTube video in which he stated, “I’m here to help you get your guns,” the news release says. “He went on to say that he did not care whether the person he was buying guns for had a history of violent crime or sex crime.”
Francis agreed to buy an AR-15 for an undercover ATF agent on Jan. 12, the news release says. On Jan. 22, he bought two semi-automatic handguns for a confidential informant “who the defendant had reasonable cause to believe was a convicted felon and therefore prohibited from purchasing guns.”
“We can’t have safe communities if people like this are allowed to put AR-15s and semi-auto pistols into the hands of dangerous people,” Troyer said in a statement. “And we can’t have safe communities without citizens who care alerting law enforcement when they see this kind of behavior. So we thank those citizens, and we thank the ATF for their methodical work to put Francis out of business.”
