Indiana gun shop owner sentenced for illegal sales

INDIANAPOLIS — The owner of an eastern Indiana gun shop has been sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to give up thousands of firearms after pleading guilty to federal charges that he illegally sold guns he knew were going to a convicted felon.

Charles Ludington hesitated to plead guilty during Thursday’s court hearing, doing so after the judge called a brief recess and he spoke outside the courtroom with his attorney, The Star Press reported.

“The firearm I sold was always to a legitimate person,” Ludington said. “I know I made a mistake. (But) I’m not a criminal.”

The plea agreement approved by the judge requires the 62-year-old Ludington to forfeit nearly 4,300 guns, some 600,000 rounds of ammunition and about $160,000 in cash that federal agents seized when raiding his Parker City store last April. He also will be prohibited from possessing firearms after he’s released from prison.

Authorities maintained audio and video tapes of transactions involving undercover agents proved that Ludington knowingly sold guns five times in early 2011 to buyers accompanied by purported felons, in whose hands the weapons were to end up.

“Mr. Ludington was willing to make sales he should not have been making,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Rinka said. “Greed got the better of Mr. Ludington. ... (He) knew better, he just didn’t care.”

Prosecutors said Ludington couldn’t account for 997 guns that were in the inventory of his Ludco Gun Shop in the rural Randolph County town about 10 miles east of Muncie.

More than 30 of Ludington’s friends and family members nearly filled the courtroom gallery.

Judge Tanya Walton Pratt said she had received and read “a huge packet of letters” from Ludington’s supporters, many of them recounting his years of service as a member of Parker City’s Town Council and other efforts on behalf of the community.

“We live in a very violent world,” she told Ludington’s supporters at the end of Thursday’s hearing. “And you just have to follow the laws, whether you agree with them or not.”