He ran a gun show as a convicted felon, feds say. Now NC man is headed back to prison
The longtime owner of a gun show in Eastern North Carolina spent three months in prison in 2005 after getting busted for selling and buying guns without a license.
After his release he went right back to running his gun show, prosecutors said.
Sherwood Watson Caraway was sentenced Tuesday to one year and one day in prison after he pleaded guilty to owning firearms as a convicted felon, prosecutors in the Eastern District of North Carolina said. Caraway was also ordered to surrender all of his guns and ammunition.
The 62-year-old had been the owner and registered agent of S&D Show Promotions Inc. since 1993, state records show. S&D is a gun and knife show production company operating out of Eastern North Carolina.
Prosecutors said Caraway sold his interest in the gun shows after he pleaded guilty last year.
Defense attorneys representing Caraway did not immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment on Tuesday, and Caraway could not be reached for comment.
According to federal court filings, Caraway was charged in 2005 with selling firearms without a license. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three months in prison with two years of supervised release.
Caraway apologized to the court during his sentencing hearing in November 2005, saying what he did was wrong but not intentional because he thought he didn’t need a license to “buy, sell and trade to enhance (his) collection.”
“I just love guns and I collect,” he said. “In fact, I’ve got 42 of them in my safe — or had 42 of them.”
Prosecutors, however, rebuffed the idea that Caraway didn’t know what he was doing when he reportedly sold guns to undercover agents, saying he “knows what he’s doing is illegal.”
“He is a gun dealer. He needs a license. He can’t get one now,” prosecutors said during the hearing. “The government would like a judgment fashioned in such a way that this man can’t do what he so desperately wants to do, deal in guns. He has no intention of giving up the gun show. He expects to run these things on and on and on.”
That’s exactly what Caraway did, prosecutors said Tuesday.
The gun shows go on
Investigators determined Caraway continued to run S&D Gun and Knife Shows in North Carolina after his conviction and kept multiple guns at his home in Merritt, a small coastal community in Pamlico County.
His role in the business was no secret: Caraway was cited in multiple news articles over the years talking about the shows.
In 2009, he told WECT about an uptick in business at one of his shows after former President Barack Obama was elected. Caraway was also interviewed by Time Magazine in 2016 after Obama took executive action to close loopholes that allowed guns to be sold at gun shows without a mandatory background check.
“I don’t know what [Obama’s] trying to do,” he said in the interview. “There’s enough rules and regulations on the books right now to take care of what needs to be taken care of. The gun shows ain’t the problem, and the gun stores ain’t the problem.”
Around the same time, an article in Greenville’s Daily Reflector described S&D as “one of the largest promoters of gun shows in eastern North Carolina” with 25 shows annually.
Pandemic delayed sentencing hearing
Prosecutors said detectives with the Pamlico County Sheriff’s Office searched Caraway’s house in September 2017 and found “numerous rifles, shotguns, and handguns, along with thousands of rounds of ammunition.” They also found 33 guns at his daughter’s house that were previously stored at Caraway’s, according to the release.
In total, more than 40 firearms were seized.
Caraway was charged by criminal information in 2019, court filings show. He pleaded guilty in July that year but his sentencing hearing was delayed during the coronavirus pandemic.
In addition to the prison sentence he received Tuesday, Caraway was ordered to spend three years on supervised release and pay a $10,000 fine.
The judge requested Caraway surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on Oct. 8.
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