Drug User who Bought Firearms for His Dealer Sentenced to Federal Prison

A man who bought seven firearms for his drug dealer was sentenced on April 10, 2025, to more than one year in federal prison.

Desmond Staggers, age 26, from Iowa City, Iowa, received the prison term after an October 10, 2024 guilty plea to one count of possession of firearms by an unlawful user of controlled substance.

Information from Staggers’s plea and sentencing hearings showed that over a period of months in 2023 and 2024, Staggers purchased seven firearms.  At the time he bought the firearms, Staggers was a user of and addicted to heroin and fentanyl.  Staggers bought the firearms at the direction of his drug dealer, and after buying them, gave them directly to the dealer. 

Staggers was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge C.J. Williams.  Staggers was sentenced to 23 months’ imprisonment.  He must also serve a three-year term of supervised release after the prison term.  There is no parole in the federal system.

This case is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a program bringing together all levels of law enforcement and the communities they serve to reduce violent crime and gun violence, and to make our neighborhoods safer for everyone. On May 26, 2021, the Department launched a violent crime reduction strategy strengthening PSN based on these core principles: fostering trust and legitimacy in our communities, supporting community-based organizations that help prevent violence from occurring in the first place, setting focused and strategic enforcement priorities, and measuring the results.

Staggers was released on the bond previously set and is to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on a date yet to be set.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Kyndra Lundquist and investigated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.  

Court file information at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.

The case file number is 24-CR-0084.

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