Quote Originally Posted by Newton_14 View Post
One rebuttal. It's my understanding from the police report that the clip from the gun was found in the car. I get that none of the three were officially charged with gun related charges, but we do not know why that is. It was never made public why no charges came from the gun being found. The police never said whether or not they checked the gun for prints. I personally believe had it been 3 no name Durham kids in the vehicle that night, the gun charges would not have been dropped.
You may be right, because, unfortunately, that is often the way law enforcement works--bring as many charges as possible against people who are unlikely to have capable legal advice in the hope of getting a plea on the most important/legitimate charges.

But--as Olympic Fan has pointed out, it's apparently not illegal to own an unregistered gun in NC, so unless the police could not only connect the gun to the people in the car (which a clip might do) but connect it to something illegal--having been stolen or having been used in a crime, for example--it might not make any difference. Although I don't remember seeing any formal report, I think I read somewhere (maybe on Pack Pride?) that the police determined the gun was "clean."

Granted, as Urinal Cake noted, the presence of a gun does suggest the possibility that the people in the car may have been dealing rather than just possessing, but I doubt that kind of inference, without more, could be the basis for a criminal charge. For what it's worth, my gut instinct (also, clearly, not relevant in any legal proceedings) tells me that they were not actually dealing, gun or no gun.