Three men from the District have been slapped with federal gun charges, according to an announcement from U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin Jr., an investigation that involved the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). The men, identified as Wesley Hilliard, 32, Sequan Collier, 27, and Naseer Green, 19, were indicted under the "Make D.C. Safe Again" initiative, a program aimed at curbing violent crime in the nation's capital by targeting firearms violations.

Details from court documents reported by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia reveal that the trio's troubles started when police pulled over their vehicle for parking illegally by a fire hydrant around 2:00 a.m. on March 16, in Logan Circle. It wasn't just the open containers of alcohol that caught the officers' attention, but the whiff of firearms presence that prompted police to detain the men, leading to the discovery of loaded weapons and an unfolding of their prior convictions, which included felonies, making it illegal for them to be carrying guns.

Hilliard, who sat in the back seat, was caught with a handgun and has a history marred by a federal narcotics offense, Collier has a track record of convictions was found with a loaded gun in his waistband, and Green, the youngest and sitting in the front seat, had a loaded weapon modified for fully automatic fire, which was also reported stolen from Georgia – naturally, he doesn't have a valid license to carry in D.C. The severe nature of their offenses underlines the sprawling issues of gun control and the importation of such machines of death into the District, given that D.C. itself doesn't manufacture firearms.

The "Make D.C. Safe Again" initiative stands as the District's bastion against the rampant gun violence, wherein offenders like Hilliard, Collier, and Green become the subjects of a broader narrative of control and culpability, where the law seeks to quell the iron flow and its violent wake. With the ATF and MPD on the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Dreher is the key prosecutor setting the gears of justice into motion as, the ongoing investigation continues to unfold the layers that brought these men and their deadly cargo to a quiet street corner in the waning hours.