Loud noises outside their bedroom door woke them before dawn. Bryan Malinowski jumped up and looked at his wife, Maer. “Stay back,” she remembers her telling him after searching for her gun in a drawer and loading it.
He crept down a hallway in his home in Little Rock, Arkansas, and saw figures in the dark. She began shooting and received return fire.
The people who shot him were agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who were executing a search warrant on suspicion that Malinowski had repeatedly sold guns without a license. What made this different from many similar confrontations was that Mr. Malinowski was a respected official in the community, the director of the Little Rock airport.
Malinowski shot an officer in the foot. When officers responded, a bullet hit Mr. Malinowski, 53, in the head, and two days later he died in a hospital. His death has been met with outrage by his family, friends and gun rights supporters in Arkansas and beyond, who say the March 19 raid was ill-conceived, unnecessary and a shocking case of police overreach. government.
“Why couldn’t this be avoided?” Malinowski asked in a recent interview at his home, where freshly patched bullet holes covered the olive-hued walls.
Republicans in Congress are asking the same question. At a hearing Thursday, members of the House Judiciary Committee questioned ATF Director Steven M. Dettelbach about the case, one of the latest flashpoints in the country’s bitter division over gun access.
But in a heavily armed nation where illegal gun sales are linked to other, often violent, crimes, some law enforcement experts have defended both Malinowski’s investigation and the need to serve early-morning search warrants.
Shortly after the raid, the ATF revealed that it had been investigating Mr. Malinowski for months on suspicion that he had been selling large quantities of firearms at gun shows without a license, sometimes shortly after purchasing them. The law at the time was vague and exempted people who occasionally sold guns as a hobby, but did not specify how many sales were too many.
Evidence gathered by the ATF convinced a judge to sign a search warrant, prompting agents to enter his home on a quiet cul-de-sac that morning. It is unclear if they knocked and, if so, how long they waited before entering. Law enforcement experts said most warrants specify whether permission to enter without knocking has been granted; the order in this case did not.
Malinowski had worked at Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock since 2008 and became its executive director in 2019; He was so happy with the promotion that he cried when he told his wife, she said. He earned about $256,000 a year, the highest salary on the city payroll. He loved aviation, Malinowski said, and would have been a Navy fighter pilot if not for his imperfect vision.
Many of his friends and acquaintances knew that he also loved guns, collecting them and often selling them at shows in Arkansas.
“Bryan talked openly about going to gun shows and having a booth,” said Tom Clarke, a colleague of Malinowski’s who now serves as the airport’s interim executive director. “It was a hobby of his that he enjoyed. That’s all he was.”
But an affidavit released by the ATF paints a different picture, claiming that Malinowski was selling so many guns that he should have had a federal firearms dealer’s license. That would have required him to conduct mental health and criminal background checks on buyers.
The ATF did not respond to requests for comment. But at Thursday’s hearing, Dettelbach said the agency would begin an internal review of the raid after local prosecutors complete their own investigation and decide whether to file charges against the officers.
“Armchair harassment of police officers who were risking their lives, without evidence yet, is not the way to go here,” Dettelbach said at the hearing, responding to Republican criticism of the decision to execute the search warrant while Malinowski was in the house.
According to the affidavit, the ATF began investigating Malinowski late last year after receiving a tip from Canadian police officers who had received “a photograph of firearms from a confidential informant.” The ATF used serial numbers on some of those firearms to trace them back to Mr. Malinowski as the original purchaser.
According to the affidavit, several weapons traced to Malinowski were recovered at the crime scenes, although at least three of those crimes were possession of marijuana. One of the weapons was in the hands of a criminal; another was found on a 15-year-old boy in California who had allegedly stolen it.
The ATF also found that Malinowski had purchased more than 150 weapons from 2021 to February 2024, including several of the same models; The affidavit does not specify exactly how many of them he sold.
Agents confiscated about four dozen firearms during the search of Mr. Malinowski’s home and vehicle, according to records obtained by The New York Times.
A central issue in the case is whether Malinowski qualified for the so-called gun show loophole, which until recently allowed unlicensed private sellers in many states to sell legally at gun shows, out of their homes or online without perform background checks. Gun rights supporters say it protected the right of private collectors to buy and sell guns as a hobby; Gun control advocates say it allowed criminals to get their hands on thousands of guns each year.
In April, the Biden administration released a rule closing the loophole by requiring people who “primarily derive profits from the repetitive purchase and sale of firearms” to register as federally licensed firearms dealers. The rule faces backlash from gun rights supporters, including Tim Griffin, the attorney general of Arkansas, who is challenging it in court along with other Republican attorneys general.
Griffin mentioned the Malinowski case when he announced the lawsuit, arguing that “there was confusion” about the distinction between amateurs and full-time sellers before the raid, and that even with the new rule, “there is still a lack of clarity.” “
Malinowski’s defenders, including his sister, Lee Ann Maciujec, say he viewed gun sales as a hobby, that he sincerely believed it classified him as a private seller and that the raid was flawed.
“If you break into a man’s house in the South, there’s a good chance that man is carrying guns,” said James Breeden, a former police officer and friend of Malinowski’s, who met him at a gun show.
Still, several law enforcement experts said Malinowski’s large number of gun purchases and possible sales raised questions about why he never applied for a license and that he probably should have gotten one.
Joseph Blocher, co-director of the Duke University Firearms Law Center, said the law is confusing about the difference between occasional gun dealers and for-profit dealers who make repeated sales.
Philip J. Cook, a professor emeritus at Duke who has researched the widespread availability of guns, said data shows that criminals overwhelmingly obtain their guns not from licensed dealers but through underground markets. An ATF report released last month shows that unlicensed dealers contribute to a vast black market in firearms, even if the weapons do not pass directly from their hands into those of criminals.
Some details of the ATF affidavit have been disputed by Mr. Malinowski’s family, including a passage that says he drove through North Little Rock neighborhoods “erratically” as he entered parking lots and turned around. The affidavit states that Malinowski drove at night to dangerous areas “known for violent crimes” and other illicit activities, but that officers did not observe him meeting anyone.
His family insists that Malinowski, who had a history of purchasing rental properties, was simply looking for another investment and would sometimes go to poker nights at friends’ houses in the area.
Video footage obtained by The Times shows that 57 seconds passed from the time officers placed duct tape over Malinowski’s doorbell camera until a neighbor’s security camera detected gunshots. The officers were not wearing body cameras; Dettelbach said at Thursday’s hearing that while the ATF has begun requiring them, the policy has not yet been implemented in Little Rock.
Ken Gray, a former FBI agent, said it is standard procedure for federal authorities to conduct an early morning raid and be armed, especially in a case involving someone buying and selling guns.
At a recent weekend gun show in Little Rock, where buyers looked at antique Turkish rifles and browsed a booth selling wreaths made from shotgun shells, Malinowski’s friends whispered to each other about what had happened.
Cecil Taylor, 71, of Springfield, Arkansas, said he became friends with Malinowski at gun shows, where they talked about rare coins and the dozen guns Malinowski had for sale.
“I think he just enjoyed getting away from all the stress,” Taylor said. “When you’re at a show and you’re surrounded by a lot of people with similar interests, there’s a certain camaraderie involved. And he enjoyed that.”
Malinowski’s friends at gun shows said they only learned about his work at the airport after his death.
Kerry Murphy, who runs gun shows where Malinowski was a salesman, said there was nothing nefarious about him.
“If you had told me to pick anyone in the building, I would have been the last one,” Murphy said, adding that in his experience, Malinowski primarily sold ammunition.
Murphy said about 40 dealers had walked out of his most recent gun show, in Little Rock, because of concerns about the ATF raid on Malinowski.
“They don’t want to be made an example of,” he said. “They sell their collections, they sell their personal things. And everyone is scared.”
Glenn Thrush contributed reporting.
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