How Legal Junk Can Earn You 20 Years In Prison Thanks To ATF

By Tom Knighton  Bearing Arms

No matter how much you hate the ATF, you don’t hate the ATF enough.

Sure, the Trump administration may have plans to make the ATF suck less, and some destructive policies have either ended or are being reconsidered, but the truth is that the ATF is the only law enforcement agency out there that regulates a constitutionally protected right as an explicit part of its mission.

The ATF is an agency that isn’t going to make its name on liquor busts, so that leaves guns and explosives for them.

The problem is that most of the gun charges they bring are piddling crimes that they didn’t even investigate themselves, so it means when they do something, they have to make it big and scary.

At least, that’s the only rational reason for what they did to a US Navy sailor who we’ve talked about before. He got 20 years in prison over a non-functional machine gun the ATF had to modify completely, a couple of semi-auto firearms that were classified as machine guns before the court, and now we hear a little bit about an inert RPG–something that would be junk were it not for the cool factor in a lot of people’s minds–and an ATF that is looking to make a name for itself.

That’s all thanks to Lee Williams at The Gun Writer, who wrote:

For those seeking to add some flair to their man cave, inert or nonfiring Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) launchers may satisfy your needs. GunBroker.com offers inert RPG-2 rockets for $120.00, a nonfiring RPG-7 replica for $395.00, or an inert Russian RPG-2 rocket launcher package with rocket, firing pin and hard case for $1,200.00. Spare ammo, inert RPG-7 HEAT rockets, run around $229.00.

None of these inert rocket launchers require a Federal Firearm License for the purchase because they’re not firearms. They are not real. Many have had their internal parts stripped. To be clear, these are non-firearms, which are perfectly legal for anyone to buy or own … unless you’re Patrick “Tate” Adamiak.

Adamiak is about to start the third year of his 20-year federal prison sentence because the ATF reworked his legal inert RPGs until they were capable of firing a single 7.62x39mm round.

In other words, the ATF turned his inert RPGs into live illegal weapons, which they called “destructive devices.” It shouldn’t come as any surprise. The same ATF technician who reworked the RPGs doctored Adamiak’s toy STEN submachinegun—legally a toy and still available for sale online—until it could fire a single round. Officially, he even labeled it a machinegun.

If it wasn’t for the federal RPG charges, Adamiak would have already finished his prison sentence. As to the fact that the ATF illegally turned his inert RPGs into live destructive devices, no government official seems to care.

“The two RPGs are what added the most amount of time to my prison sentence. Even if all of my other charges were legitimate—which they are not—I would have already completed more than the average sentence for possession of a fully functional machinegun, which I did not have—not even close,” Adamiak said this week from his federal prison in New Jersey.

United States Attorneys Jessica Aber and Victoria Liu were able to convince Adamiak’s jury that the 100% legal inert RPGs he owned were the equivalent of an anti-tank or an anti-aircraft missile system, even though he bought them openly and legally at a military surplus convention and gun show when he was only 19 years old.

“Doing so qualified me for a sentencing enhancement for possession of a missile launcher, effectively pushing up my recommended sentence to life in prison,” Adamiak said. “This particular sentencing enhancement has only been applied to defendants a couple of times in U.S. history, one being me. If it weren’t for this enhancement, I would already be out of prison.”

And let’s understand that if you go over there and read the rest of this story, you’ll see photographs of the RPG launcher in question. It says that it’s inert on it. It has “TRAINING AID DUMMY” written on the tube. There are holes drilled into it that would cause it to explode if you tried to launch anything out of it.

There’s no way on this planet that anyone who knows anything could look at this and think this is a live weapon.

And yet, Adamiak would be a free man today were it not for the supposed RPG that couldn’t launch a spitball.

Even if he were free, he’d still have been railroaded and deserving of a pardon or a second trial to exonerate him, but at least he’d be free. He would be able to spend time with his family or go see a movie, or just go for a walk whenever he wanted. That would still be better for him than rotting in prison over these BS charges.

I’m at a complete loss as to how this could happen.

I get that the ATF lied extensively about what they found, but I still don’t fully understand how the defense couldn’t show that they were lying. It’s so obvious that it shouldn’t have been difficult.

Our system is supposed to be set up in such a way that guilty people go free from time to time just to keep innocent people from being convicted, and yet, here we are.

This is an absolute travesty of justice, and Tate Adamiak shouldn’t just be free. He should be cleared of all charges, and the agents who did this need to be locked up instead.

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