PROVIDENCE – Attorney General Peter F. Neronha on Monday released the office’s required annual gun crimes report for the 2022 calendar year, the first since the reporting requirements were expanded by the General Assembly in 2021 to include statistics such as gun type and case outcome.
According to the report, state prosecutors dealt with 799 gun cases in 2022, the majority of which originated in Providence County and 144 of which included multiple firearms. There are currently 383 of these gun-related cases pending, according to the report.
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“Any way you look at it, this year’s report will again demonstrate that, like so many other parts of the country, our communities continue to be inundated with guns,” Neronha wrote in the report to Senate President Dominick J. Ruggerio and House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi.
Among the slate of new gun laws approved in the past three years includes the ban on large-capacity magazines that can hold more than 10 bullets. Nerohna reported that 77 of the gun cases prosecuted in 2022 involved firearms with a magazine capacity between 16 to 30 rounds and 30 cases in which magazines had a capacity of 30 or more.
Neronha touted the “Urban Violent Crime Initiative”- a multiagency, prosecutor-led partnership between the Providence, Pawtucket and Central Falls police departments, the R.I. Department of Corrections, and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. The initiative, launched in 2021, is showing results, Neronha said.
In addition, legislation passed in 2020 that prohibits the possession, sale or manufacturing of so-called “ghost guns” has been a focus of state prosecutions. Neronha said his office and law enforcement agencies across the state have seen an uptick in the proliferation of these makeshift firearms. The R.I. Office of the Attorney General has prosecuted over 90 defendants pursuant to the ghost gun law since its passage.
“Our prosecutors are seeing a significant amount of ghost guns associated with violent crime in Rhode Island, as they are sought out more and more by those who are otherwise prohibited from lawfully possessing guns in Rhode Island,” he said.
In addition to ghost guns, law enforcement continues to see assault weapons and high-capacity magazines “in every corner of the state, both rural and urban,” wrote Neronha, adding that state’s prosecutors are also going after straw purchasers, charging more than 20 people since the state law was amended to provide for criminal penalties for purchasing a firearm for the purpose of transferring it to someone legally barred from possessing one.
The report highlights several cases that Neronha said demonstrates his office’s commitment to gun-related prosecutions, including the conviction of a Providence man sentenced to 45 years, with 37 years to serve, for possessing an illegal handgun. In another case, two Providence men were convicted on ghost gun and drug trafficking charges and sentenced in August 2022 to 20 years, with 12 to serve, and 15 years, with seven to serve, respectively.
Christopher Allen is a PBN staff writer. You may contact him at Allen@PBN.com.
