ATF & Shoulder Stocks
Th Wrath Of Kwan!
District Court ruling, in pdf, here. Defendant, a reservist, has two handguns (one a semiauto, one a registered full auto) and two shoulder stocks that would fit either. The shoulder stocks double as holsters, and he has one handgun in each when ATF raids him (on other grounds, which turn out to be a legal mistake). Government argument is that the semiauto plus the stock in which it was holstered equal an unregistered short-barreled rifle. The District Court says no — using the Thompson Arms test, the two stocks had a purpose other than an illicit one, namely being fitted legally to the full auto.
Washington District court. Won’t matter much to you, given ATF tends to ignore court rulings, such as with Any Other Weapons.
August 29th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
I say we hunt them like squirrels.
August 29th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
This is the same Kwan they have been trying to railroad for years because:
-some local federal prosecutor got killed
-the ballistics said it was from a particular type of barrel
-kwan at one time owned a bunch of said barrels (he was a firearms dealer and owned vast quantities of pretty much anything)
-kwan was able to account for all but one of these particular barrels
-they think kwan did the killing or knows who did it
-they have no evidence relating to the killing beyond the body and the slug
-so they have been trying to prosecute kwan for weapons violations
-and of course kwan was extremely meticulous (like most NFA collectors) so he isn’t guilty of any such violations.
And as a result:
-cue injustice
August 29th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
I really don’t remember precisely, but the barrels were threaded tokarev barrels or makarov barrels or something similar and kwan was a makarov collector or something along those lines. It was something I deduced from the various case filings, but I read it years ago.
The barrels are like the kind that sportsman’s guide sells in their catalog (there is a page full of threaded or compensated replacement pistol barrels). Nothing particularly rare or exotic.
August 29th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Also, as a side note, makarovs, even with threaded barrels, make very poor guns for suppressed use. The increased pressure in the barrel from the can opens the slide too quickly and you get a ton of noise out of the ejection port instead of out the barrel. I find it unlikely that kwan wouldn’t have known this, seeing as he was a dealer in such items and could have discovered this problem by simply affixing one of his 9mm suppressors to such a gun and firing it.
IMO, the whole thing is just the ATF and FBI grasping at straws because they don’t want to leave the assassination of a federal prosecutor unsolved. The fact that convicting an innocent man doesn’t really count as solving the crime seems to have been lost on them.
August 29th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
they were makarovs. and DOJ has had a hard on for kwan for years.
August 29th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
They were threaded for insertion to the receiver to convert the makarov to .380, not to add a suppressor.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:18 am
Oh, that’s even more harmless than I imagined.