Alleged UVA triple-murderer Chris Jones, who rapped in a 2021 YouTube video about shooting up a party and killing a person in his sleep, had stockpiled a small arsenal in his dorm room, and this was apparently an open secret, and nobody could do anything about it, because the system worked, unfortunately, as it was supposed to.
First, to the video: The New York Times wrote last week that Jones, dancing with a gun, rapped about several ways he would kill people, and mentioned in his rhymes that he had mental problems and that he frequently carried a weapon.
Now, of course, we need to be careful about assuming that the rhymes weren’t just free expression run amok, just a guy a year ago basically frontin’ that he was a gangsta rapper.
The kid was a college student, right?
But that said, damn, even if that’s the case, and it was art for the sake of art, it doesn’t take a great mental leap to connect some dots from the 2021 video to what happened on Nov. 13.
Jones, 23, had said in past media interviews that he had felt bullied as a teen, and friends and family who talked with the media after he was arrested and charged in the murders of UVA Football player Devin Chandler, who, notably, was shot in his sleep, art imitating life there, right, and his teammates, Lavel Davis Jr. and D’Sean Perry, had confirmed that Jones had told them he’d had trouble dealing with what he felt was bullying behavior of others, without going into specifics as to the source of whatever bullying he may have actually been enduring.
We also know that he had ready access to guns, from a report that University officials had investigated in September, and then from the Nov. 14 search of his dorm room, which came up with a laundry list of items, including:
- a Ruger AR-556 semi-automatic rifle
- a Smith & Wesson semi-automatic pistol
- a PMAG with 30 rounds for a .223 rifle, another PMAG with 29 rounds for a .223 rifle
- two receipts for purchases of the .223 ammunition, plus two magazines for a Glock 9mm pistol
- armory tools, holster, backstrap, gun cleaning kit
This is quite the set-up for a wannabe gangsta rapper college student in his dorm room.
Keep in mind that University officials, back in September, had been made aware by another UVA student that Jones had made a comment about having a gun, which led to efforts on the part of the UVA Police Department to reach out to Jones to try to learn more.
The investigation fizzled out when Jones refused to cooperate with police, and also, according to a statement from the University, officials spoke with his roommate, “who gave no indication of the presence of any weapons.”
You have to wonder if the roommate might be the subject of an ongoing or soon-to-be-coming Honor Committee investigation, or something even more serious involving law enforcement, given what police later found in the dorm room.
UVA Police investigators did get something from their brief look into Jones – that he had failed to report an October 2021 conviction on a concealed weapons charge in Chesterfield County that resulted in 12-month suspended sentence.
There were two other criminal convictions on Jones’ record – from earlier in 2021, for failing to stop for an accident resulting in more than $1,000 in damages and reckless driving dating to an Aug. 9, 2020, incident in Petersburg.
Despite these convictions, Jones was able to legally purchase the Ruger AR-556 in February and the Glock 9mm pistol in July from a Colonial Heights gun dealer.
The gun dealer, notably, told news outlets last month that Jones had twice earlier failed background checks in attempts to purchase items from the store, in 2018 and 2021.
That’s the system working for you there: a guy who had twice failed background checks and had three convictions on his record, one for a concealed weapons charge, was still able to legally purchase two guns.
The system also working for you: note that a Smith & Wesson pistol was among the items found in his dorm room.
To this point, we’ve not been made aware that the Smith & Wesson was legally purchased, just that it was found in his dorm room.
The Smith & Wesson, and the gun seized when Jones was arrested in Chesterfield County on the concealed weapons charge in 2021, we might presume were purchased illegally.
We’ve long since stopped pretending that we’re ever going to do anything about the proliferation of illegal guns in this country.
The official response for decades has been a collective throw of our hands into the air, and then thoughts and prayers.
The system also working for us is what gave us the fizzled investigation by UVA.
As much as media reports seem to be faulting the school for dropping the ball after receiving the report that Jones had a gun in his dorm room, it’s hard to imagine a judge authorizing a search warrant based on the report from another student that Jones had said he had a gun and the past convictions.
Even the 2021 rap video, factored in, wouldn’t have moved a judge.
“If you took all of those items together, I don’t see any judge issuing a search warrant,” Steven D. Benjamin, a defense attorney in Richmond who serves as Special Counsel to the Virginia Senate Courts of Justice Committee, told the Times.
Absent something else significant, then, the most the University could do was the effort set into motion to refer him to a student-led judiciary committee for a possible light slap on the wrist.
Basically, a guy who rapped on a video on YouTube about wanting to shoot people, that somebody said had told him he had a gun, and who had an arsenal in his dorm room, who people around him said he felt bullied, and had several criminal convictions on his record, including one for carrying a concealed weapon, the most we could do was, maybe suspend him from school for a semester.
The system, and this is what’s frustrating, worked in this case the way it’s supposed to.
Jones went through background checks, was serving out three suspended 12-month sentences, was able to dodge UVA Police because nothing required him to talk to them.
That’s why three people are dead.
Because the system worked.
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Chris Graham
