Is your gun an automatic? Ever had a malfunction?

[bountyhunter]

Originally Posted by Palmguy

I'm not much for taking the side of the ATF, well, ever...but there is a lot more to this story than is being discussed, and the weapon was examined by the ATF (although there is a lot to that story as well).

If I was Olofson, I wouldn't have loaned out a weapon to someone that I knew had the potential to malfunction in such a manner (and in an AR with a third selector position at that).

I wonder if it had been modified. I can't imagine how any conviction could be sustained if the weapon was stock and simply failed to operate correctly.

Here's how they charged him:

The cornerstone of this charge is the government’s contention that it doesn’t matter whether a gun fires multiple shots as a result of malfunction or modification because the law defines a machinegun as; “… any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.” While on the witness stand, firearms expert Len Savage asked the Assistant US Attorney prosecuting the case if that would make his grandfather’s old double-gun a machinegun if it malfunctioned and fired both barrels with one pull of the trigger. The AUSA responded by paraphrasing the legal definition of a machinegun with emphasis placed on “any weapon which shoots… more than one shot… by a single function of the trigger.”

What a screw job.

[SparkE!]

There's a thread about 53 pages long over at AR15.com on this case. The thread was started by David Olofson himself:

AR15.COM :: Forums :: Update on Berlin BATFE Raid

[bountyhunter]

I guess this is the kind of fertilizer that grows loonies like Timothy McVeigh.

[03RangerXLT]

And then just look at TI's sentence. A travesty in my opinion.

[donster]

Could he not say that the trigger only caused the first shot to go off, and the malfunction caused the other two shots?

It also looks like the weapon was not designed for "soft primered commercial ammunition" that it was retested with once it passed the first examination

[krazykozmetics]

damn what bull****. excuse my mouth. Everybody take your sks apart and clean it twice dont want any cosmolin e to cause a slam fire or you will hear the slam of the jail doors. ooops sory my rifle wasnt perfect.

[jcabin]

this is disgusting and unfair.

[Nakanokalronin]

Did'nt this happen after the student put around 600-800 rounds through it in a single session? Looks like a stuck firing pin to me. Makes me wish they made a spring loaded firing pin for the AR like they do for the SKSs which are known to slam fire once in awhile.

[Sauger]

This is just more proof that the BATF is the FBI's retarded little brother!

[Raskolnikov]

This is insane. Some prosecutor is angling for a senate seat next year.....

I've seen this happen firsthand with an M16A1 that fired full-auto while set on "semi". My Army unit at the range, the range safeties had a meltdown and spent the next ten minutes loading and unloading and firing trying to get the weapon to fire full-auto. It finally did and everyone took a chill pill.... Scary that it could happen on a rifle that was built to be a semi-auto. The ATF is clearly overreacting to this.