Automatic Gun Transfer Nets Prison Sentence

by John Diedrich - May 13th, 2008 - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

A Wisconsin man whose federal conviction for illegally transferring a machine gun drew national attention on CNN and the Internet was sentenced Tuesday to 30 months in prison.

Some excerpts from an article by NFA Owners Association, a gun owners group, gives the details of this case.

. . . Mr. Olofson had lent an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to a person who was interested in joining the National Guard. While firing the rifle at a public gun range -- he had previously fired some 800 rounds through the rifle without any problems -- the gun malfunctioned, fired two rounds and then jammed. Law enforcement officers at the range questioned the man, referred the case to ATF, and ATF charged Mr. Olofson with the illegal transfer of a machine gun; the Assistant United States Attorney argued that a "malfunction" was no defense . . .

. . . when ATF tested the AR-15, ATF reported that the AR-15 was not a machine gun [that is it passed the test and did not fire automatically!]; however, the ATF Special Agent in charge of the case requested that ATF re-test the AR-15 using ammunition with more sensitive primers, and after the AR-15 fired multiple rounds and jammed, ATF took the position that the AR-15 was a machine gun.

. . . Mr. Olofson was convicted by a jury (click here to view the report).

. . . firearms expert Len Savage, President, Historic Arms LLC of Franklin, Georgia, a expert witness in two recent federal prosecutions involving firearms, stated that the reason for this problem is that ATF has no firearms testing standards; that each firearms test is done individually; and that the lack of scientific testing standards is a serious problem.

. . . Mr. Dobbs [of CNN] noted that proposed legislation under H.R. 1792 would require ATF to videotape all firearms tests, and showed a clip of ATF firearms examiner Michael J. Cooney testing a rifle under similar conditions (that particular firearm had broken internal parts and had malfunctioned; defendant John Glover's conviction was ultimately dismissed with prejudice for that reason, following its exposure by Mr. Savage; click here to read about the Glover case).

. . . Mr. Dobbs stated that future reports will feature interviews with or about ATF so that questions about why Mr. Olofson was targeted for prosecution inappropriately can be answered, as well as what the Congressional delegation from Wisconsin and the National Rifle Association has to say about the injustice perpetrated against Mr. Olofson, and how the problem of inappropriate prosecutions involving malfunctioning firearms can be corrected.

You can see Lou Dobbs video about this case here and here.

My problem with this case is the usual socialist goon habit of trying to twist evidence and make the person charged seem to be more evil than his actions would indicate are true. This is a man who has never committed a crime. One of the so-called crimes he committed was merely carrying a gun for protection while his kids went "trick or treating". The government also introduced so-called evidence that Mr. Olofson had been reprimanded for things which would have denied him an honorable discharge. However he got an honorable discharge because an investigation of that earlier incident had cleared him and he had not been reprimanded.

The liberal anti-gun Judge, Clevert, bent the rules to admit this irrelevant and questionable evidence and made statements that persuaded some gullible jurors to convict. However voire dire allows Judges to rig juries to be dominated by those likely to follow judicial dictates, so the jury convicting means nothing.

In my opinion the ATF Agent, the prosecutor and the Judge should all be tried for malfeasance of office and abuse of power.

This is typical of modern court corruption. There is no justice when the courts practice the "rule of judges".