Switch Dealer Gets 25 Years

⏱ 3 min read

Laclarence Lamarcus Anderson, 43, is staring down a 25-year stretch in federal prison after a jury convicted him of pushing illegal firearms, including Glock switches that turn pistols into automatic weapons, alongside a cocktail of drugs. The deals went down in Columbia, South Carolina, between May and June of this year.

Anderson wasn’t just slinging iron to anyone. Federal informants bought firearms and hard drugs—meth, coke, and crack—directly from him on four separate occasions. Even grimmer: investigators linked two of the guns Anderson sold to prior shootings in surrounding counties, one leaving a man fighting for his life, the other proving fatal.

But the feds didn’t just hit him with the fresh sales. Anderson’s record is a mile long, packed with convictions for assault, armed robbery, and previous gun and drug offenses. As a convicted felon, he wasn’t legally allowed to possess firearms in the first place. That prior record turned a bad situation into a near-lifelong sentence.

U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie handed down the 297-month sentence with no chance of parole. The case was a joint effort by the ATF and Richland County Sheriff’s Department, prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Elle E. Klein. Anderson’s days of dealing are over.