Convicted felon gets over 6 years for selling guns out of North Lawndale home

A convicted felon was sentenced last week to six and a half years in federal prison for illegally selling guns out of his North Lawndale neighborhood home.

Jymil Campbell, 31, pleaded guilty earlier this year to single counts of illegally possessing a firearm as a felon and willfully dealing firearms without a license, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Illinois. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Robert W. Gettleman sentenced Campbell to 78 months in prison.

Campbell was arrested in the summer of 2016 after selling 10 handguns, three rifles and four high-capacity magazines to a pair of confidential informants, who in turn handed the weapons over to law enforcement officials after each sale, prosecutors said. The transactions, which netted Campbell $8,700 in cash, were made over a nine-month period that ended with his arrest.

Most of the sales happened at Campbell’s home in the 2100 block of South Millard, prosecutors said. According to his plea agreement, one of the gun buyers told Campbell that the weapons would be used in “illegal gun violence.” Unfazed, Campbell went through with the sale and admitted to personally firing one of the “brand new” rifles, which he said had not been “shot shot, like in a war.”

“No illegal sales of any firearms – especially in this time and place – should be accepted, let alone 13,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Devlin N. Su argued in the government’s sentencing memorandum. “Chicagoans are extremely fortunate that the buyers of the weapons turned out to be working for law enforcement, because any willingness to inject guns onto the streets fuels the violence.”

In his plea deal, Campbell also acknowledged that he couldn’t legally posses or sell guns because he lacked a federal firearms license and had previously been convicted of felony counts of home invasion and armed robbery, prosecutors said.