Dexter Taylor may be incarcerated, but he’s refusing to be muzzled.
The 53-year-old Brooklyn resident was sentenced to a decade in prison earlier this year for making and possessing multiple unserialized firearms in violation of New York’s ban on “ghost guns”. CBS News reporter Maurice Dubois recently visited Taylor at the maximum security prison near Albany that he now calls home, and delivered a fairly sympathetic report on his story.
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Taylor is a self-described nerd and tinkerer. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School, studied biomedical engineering for a time at Johns Hopkins University, and later taught himself how to write code. He added he has been fascinated with guns since he was a child.
He said he knows how he got on law enforcement’s radar.
“ATF has been driving search warrants around the country by, you know, going up to parts manufacturers and saying, ‘Run those lists for me,'” Taylor said.
He had been under surveillance, flagged using his own credit card and home address ordering parts to build weapons. The guns and parts were unlicensed, unregistered, and illegal in New York.
For that “crime” Taylor was sentenced to ten years in prison. Compare that to the sentences three men received for committing an armed home invasion in Schenectady just two months before Taylor’s home was raided by police.
William Choate, 21, Deshawn Cherry, 21, and Rockym Alston, 19, all of Portsmouth, VA, were sentenced to varying prison sentences before Judge Matthew Sypniewski.
The three previously each pled guilty to felony count second-degree criminal possession of a weapon.Judge Sypniewski sentenced Choate and Cherry to seven years in State Prison. Alston was sentenced to five years in State Prison.
A fourth co-defendant, Radames Moya, 23, of Schenectady, is set to be sentenced in March to five years in prison.
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Taylor wasn’t accused of committing a violent assault with any of his home-built guns, but for the “violent” crime of possessing unregistered and unserialized firearms in his own home, he now sits in a maximum security prison alongside those convicted of crimes like murder, armed robbery, and sexual assault; many of whom will depart the Coxsackie Correctional Facility after serving shorter sentences than Taylor.
Dubois asked if he has a license to carry a gun in New York City, to which Taylor responded, “I still do have a license. It’s called the Second Amendment.”
Dubois asked if his weapons were registered.
“No such registration is required,” Taylor said. “In other words, I know what you’re getting at, but you see what I’m getting at is that is, wait a minute, is that the law of the land supersedes the law of the state.”
Dubois asked if his guns had serial numbers? Taylor said no.
Taylor’s home was raided in April, 2022, two months before the Supreme Court issued its Bruen decision striking down New York’s “may issue” carry laws. Even if Taylor had applied with the NYPD for a carry permit, there’s no reason to believe he would have been approved unless he could have proven a “justifiable need”.
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Taylor’s attorney Vinoo Varghese says his client told him not to accept a plea deal that would have seen him sentenced to no more than four years in prison. And it sounds like Taylor is willing to remain behind bars on principle while his appeal drags out through the New York judicial system.
“He didn’t fire them. He never took them out of his house,” Varghese said. “There’s nothing more central to the Second Amendment than the individual right to bear arms in his own home.
“That is the ultimate legal question that’s going to go to federal court. We fully, we knew we’re gonna lose the state court. We’re gonna lose at the mid-level appellate court. We’re gonna lose that in Albany, in New York state, but then we’re gonna come right back to Brooklyn in federal court there,” Varghese added.
Is Brooklyn safer with Dexter Taylor stuck behind bars? Nope, because he was never a threat to begin with. And contrary to New York law, there is no national tradition banning average, everyday citizens from building their own firearms, nor are there “longstanding laws” dating to 1791 or 1868 requiring firearms to be serialized. New York’s statutes contradict our national tradition of gun ownership and the language of the Second Amendment, and its a travesty that even Taylor’s lawyer says there’s no way his client can find justice in state court.
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Taylor is now considered a violent felon by the state of New York for engaging in constitutionally protected activities. Many Second Amendment supporters, on the other hand, consider him a political prisoner held captive by the state to serve as a warning to others about the dangers of violating New York’s draconian gun control laws.
