Thank you, Lee, for refusing to let this story disappear. If the facts are as presented, a 20-year sentence over nonfunctioning collector items is not justice. Tate deserves a real, timely review and meaningful action—not more statements of concern. Due process and accountability have to mean something for every American.
During my 30 yr career we had several cases in which we exhausted all legal remedies. These cases were clear cut and easily solved, if the judiciary would make a truly righteous decision.
In the end it took public pressure and an active stand by a community of people to resolve the matters. Judges are part of an elite community that had no concern for right and wrong. At the threat of real community action , the judge finally relented and applied real law.
Tate’s case is in fact a massive experiment and the American people are being tested to see if we truly believe in our God given rights and our Constitutional system. So far, the elites are winning.
Tate’s family needs to call on a broader community of Americans to enforce our constitutional standards. It is their right to do so. Tate should released at all cost regardless of the level of action needed. If we don’t take care of this, our conditions will only grow worse. If we aren’t will to enforce our way of life, it will be taken away. That’s on us!
This case is far more important than most people realize. Someone should contact General Flynn about this and Jeffery Prather a former Army Intelligence asset and DEA agent. They could help expand the outrage and influence.
I recently wrote to our senator, Mike Lee, with no response in regards to Tate’s situation.I have also written to every conservative commentator on Sirius XM, as well as President Trump and others in the administration with no response, including Harmeet Dillon at the DOJ, with no affirmative response. I will write to the new Attorney General next. Until there is an uproar from many thousands more people on Tate’s case I fear that Tate will continue to languish in prison. If anyone has any further ideas I am more than open to hearing them. I fear for Tate’s safety and pray for him daily.
It looks like Tate must have really pissed off some important person or this would have been resolved by now. Has anyone thought about suing Bodell for misrepresenting facts and findings in a court of law? Or maybe even questioning his so-called expertise? They say the wheels of justice turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine. It appears these wheels have stopped turning, maybe because some loose nut has jammed the works.
Reading your article, you’d have people believe the federal government locked a Navy veteran in a cage for 20 years over a $75 Spanish toy and some museum relics. It’s a compelling story, but it’s a complete straw man. Your piece is a textbook example of cherry-picking evidence and omitting material facts to craft a narrative of a "miscarriage of justice," while completely ignoring the reality of what the government actually proved in court.
To make the ATF look ridiculous, you focus entirely on the least severe items found during the raid—specifically the Denix STEN replica and the inert RPG training aids. By hammering on these items, you create a false perception that Adamiak was just a naive history buff targeted by an overzealous administration.
What you conveniently avoid mentioning is the actual undercover sting operation that led to Adamiak’s arrest. Adamiak wasn't raided because of a toy on his wall; he was investigated because he was operating an unlicensed, underground arms business called Black Dog Arsenal.
You claim he was selling "inert collector pieces" that are "still sold legally online." That is highly deceptive. Adamiak was dealing in demilitarized ("demilled") machine gun parts kits—specifically Polish PPS-43s, Russian RPDs, and Thompson submachine guns. While demilled kits do exist in a highly scrutinized legal gray area, under the National Firearms Act, a machine gun includes any weapon or receiver that can be "readily restored to shoot, automatically."
The government proved that the specific receivers Adamiak was selling were not sufficiently destroyed. In the gun-building community, it is a well-known open secret that certain parts kits are highly sought after precisely because they are easy to re-assemble. With a simple metal jig and a TIG welder, a buyer can fuse the chopped receiver halves back together, drop in the fully automatic trigger group and bolt that comes with the kit, and walk away with an untraceable, fully functioning military machine gun. Adamiak purposefully purchased these specific kits knowing exactly how easily they could be restored.
Most damning of all, you completely ignore Adamiak’s explicit criminal intent. You claim, "He broke no law. He did nothing wrong." But the jury saw the receipts. Beginning in late 2021, an ATF confidential informant emailed Adamiak specifically asking to buy receiver parts with clean cuts so they could be "welded back together" into operable weapons. Adamiak didn't refuse the sale. He didn't warn the buyer that manufacturing an unregistered machine gun is a federal felony. Knowing full well the buyer's intent to illegally re-weld and manufacture machine guns, Adamiak processed the payments and shipped the receivers anyway.
It is also worth reminding you that Adamiak had a full jury trial. Both the defense and the prosecution presented their cases to a jury of his peers. The defense made the exact same arguments you are making now—that these were just harmless historical toys and scrap metal—and the jury simply did not find that argument compelling in the face of the government's evidence.
You can certainly argue that a 20-year sentence driven by federal sentencing guidelines is incredibly harsh. Even the ATF Director has noted the sentence was heavy. But what you also fail to mention is that the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals recently reviewed this case and struck down his appeal on almost every single front, affirming the core convictions. The only charge they vacated was based on a Double Jeopardy technicality, meaning Adamiak is already looking at being resentenced to roughly 10 years.
This case represents a classic example of federal over-sentencing, but it is definitively not the "miscarriage of justice" you are trying to paint it as. Adamiak knowingly supplied the exact, critical components necessary for people to build illegal, untraceable machine guns in their garages, and he did it for a profit. You are relying on omitting those crucial facts to sell your outrage. Your article is not a yell for justice but a simple political attack on a Federal agency.
Yes, all articles written by your site and in the same slant. I subscribe to you newsletter, I absolutely support 2A, and depending who is in the seats, defending it from every attack. I retired after 33-years military and do not feel compelled to support this guy. Spending time in units in the Beach area, the secret is that he got caught for exactly what he was doing. So yes he should not be over-sentenced, but caught is caught.
Then do not support him, Stuart. It's actually that simple. In the meantime, I shall keep doing everything I can to get him released. After all, he's a completely innocent man behind bars, who was completely railroaded by Joe Biden's ATF for political reasons. Tate did nothing wrong.
And you should, as well as his defense attorney needs to hammer home all the areas he can. This is how our justice system is set up, and in our great country opinions are that, opinions, and we all have them. I have posted how I came to my opinion and stand by it., as I am sure you do too. I do hope that any wrong in his case is rectified and he is treated fare and just.
I think you're glossing over the central problem in this case. It's more serious than federal over-sentencing.
You acknowledge that demilled parts kits occupy a "highly scrutinized legal gray area," but then treat the government's interpretation of that gray area as though it were an objective and uncontested fact. That's precisely where the potential for abuse lies. When criminal liability depends upon an agency's subjective determination of whether scrap metal can be "readily restored," the agency is effectively deciding where the boundary of the criminal law falls.
Your most revealing statement is that certain parts kits are desirable because they are "easy to re-assemble." But what does "easy" mean in legal terms? Does restoration require a jig, a TIG welder, replacement metal, machining, specialized knowledge, additional parts, and hours of skilled labor? How many operations are permitted before restoration ceases to be "readily" accomplished and becomes the manufacture of a new firearm? There must be an objective and consistently applied standard. Otherwise, almost any demilled receiver could be called a machine gun merely because a sufficiently skilled and well-equipped person could reconstruct it.
You also conflate several separate propositions. The confidential informant may have expressed an intention to manufacture an illegal machine gun. Tate may have understood what the informant wanted to do. But neither fact automatically proves that the pieces Tate sold were already machine guns under federal law. Nor does it automatically make Tate responsible for a firearm that another person might subsequently manufacture from those pieces.
If the government believed Tate knowingly agreed to assist someone in illegally manufacturing a machine gun, it could have pursued a charge based on that alleged conduct and proved the necessary elements. Instead, ATF classified the demilled material itself as a machine gun. That allowed the agency's interpretation of "readily restored" to carry enormous weight in converting the sale of otherwise commercially available material into a serious federal felony.
That distinction matters. There's a vast legal difference between selling an actual machine gun and selling pieces of metal from which another person, using tools, skill, labor, and possibly additional material, could manufacture one. The government can't erase that distinction simply by repeatedly calling the pieces a "machine gun."
The fact that Tate received a jury trial doesn't eliminate this concern. A jury decides a case using the evidence, expert testimony, classifications, and legal instructions presented to it. If an enforcement agency misclassifies an object, applies an inconsistent technical standard, or gives misleading testimony about the work necessary to restore it, the words "jury trial" do not magically cure the problem. Juries are an essential protection, but they're not a substitute for clear statutes, objective technical standards, accurate expert testimony, and meaningful judicial review.
The Fourth Circuit's decision doesn't settle the underlying controversy as conclusively as you suggest, either. On the sufficiency of the evidence, the appellate court applied a highly deferential standard. It asked whether any rational jury could have reached the verdict based upon the evidence presented. That's not the same thing as independently determining that every ATF classification was technically correct. The opinion was also unpublished and nonprecedential, and its discussion of the disputed technical evidence was remarkably brief.
You also dismiss the successful Double Jeopardy claim as a "technicality." It wasn't. The government conceded that Tate had been convicted and consecutively sentenced twice for the same underlying offense. The protection against multiple punishments for the same offense is a constitutional right, not a procedural loophole. The Fourth Circuit ordered one of those convictions vacated and directed the district court to resentence him. It didn't determine that he would necessarily receive "roughly 10 years."
More importantly, this case must be viewed in the context of how ATF operated under the Biden administration. During that period, ATF aggressively expanded firearms definitions, reversed or altered prior classifications, and used ambiguous concepts such as "readily converted" and "readily restored" against people operating in areas that had previously been treated as lawful. That's not merely a sentencing issue. It's an abuse-of-power issue.
The danger of a legal gray area is not that everyone within it will be prosecuted. The danger is that the government can choose whom to prosecute. Conduct tolerated when performed by thousands of ordinary collectors and vendors can suddenly be characterized as criminal when the agency selects a particular target. The uncertainty itself becomes a weapon because citizens can't reliably determine in advance where lawful conduct ends and a felony begins.
That's why "caught is caught" isn't an adequate response. Caught doing what, according to which objective standard, established when, and applied consistently to whom? Those questions are fundamental when the enforcing agency possesses the practical authority to decide that pieces of demilled metal have crossed an uncertain line and become a machine gun.
You may reasonably believe Tate exercised poor judgment by dealing with someone who openly discussed reconstructing the parts. You may also conclude that he operated too close to a dangerous legal boundary. But poor judgment isn't a substitute for a clearly defined criminal offense, and suspicion about his intentions doesn't relieve the government of its obligation to prove that the specific objects actually satisfied the statute.
That's what makes Tate's case so important. It's not necessary to portray him as naive or flawless to recognize the institutional danger. His case illustrates how ambiguous laws, discretionary classifications, incentivized informants, agency expert testimony, stacked charges, and extraordinary sentences can be combined against a selected defendant.
That's more than over-sentencing. It's a demonstration of how gray areas in federal firearms law can be selectively enforced to terrorize disfavored people and groups. If the government can decide after the fact that commercially available demilled parts were actually machine guns because someone could reconstruct them with enough equipment and skill, then no collector, vendor, gunsmith, or parts-kit owner can know with confidence where the criminal boundary lies.
A free society should demand more than "the agency called it a machine gun, the jury accepted that characterization, and caught is caught." It should demand clear laws, objective standards, consistent enforcement, truthful testimony, proportional punishment, and especially rigorous scrutiny when an agency is exercising enormous discretion against a politically disfavored class.
That's why Tate's case deserves continued attention and a complete resolution, not merely a reduction of his sentence.
You wrote a lot of words, but your response reads like a rambling attempt to pivot away from the actual facts of the case. You are trying to turn a straightforward criminal conviction into a grand political conspiracy. Let's cut through the noise: people are weaponizing Tate Adamiak's situation for political attacks to distract from a very clear situation.
You spend paragraphs debating the philosophical meaning of "readily restored" and arguing that the ATF is using a subjective standard to trap innocent people. But the definition of "readily restored" is not some new, subjective Biden-era conspiracy. Under the National Firearms Act (26 U.S.C. § 5845(b)), a machine gun includes any weapon which "can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot." The courts have repeatedly upheld this standard for decades. In *United States v. One TRW Model M14* (6th Cir. 2006), the court clearly outlined the elements of restoration—time, ease, expertise, necessary equipment, and availability of parts. The government proved that Adamiak's specific parts kits met this threshold because they were easily re-welded using basic tools and readily available parts.
You are deliberately ignoring *how* this law applied to the specific facts of Adamiak's actions. He wasn't a victim of an unpredictable, shifting standard; he actively sought out and sold specific, improperly demilled kits precisely *because* they bypassed the functional destruction standard. This wasn't a guy selling paperweights who got blindsided by a rogue agency; this was an individual running a business supplying the exact parts needed to easily build untraceable machine guns.
You also try to separate the buyer's intent from the legal status of the metal, arguing that selling parts to someone who wants to build a gun doesn't make the parts themselves illegal. That is a slick semantic maneuver, but it falls apart in the real world. When an undercover agent explicitly tells you they are buying your parts to illegally weld them back into functional machine guns, and you proceed to take their money and ship the parts anyway, you are no longer operating in a "gray area." You are knowingly participating in the illicit supply chain. As established in conspiracy and aiding/abetting case law, your knowledge of the end-user's intent and your material support of that illegal manufacture absolutely exposes you to criminal liability. You are trying to use legal theory to excuse his blatant criminal intent.
Furthermore, you casually dismiss both the jury trial and the appellate court review simply because they don't fit your narrative of a tyrannical government. The jury looked at the actual parts, heard the experts explain the reassembly process under the established legal precedents for "readily restored," saw the communications with the informant, and decided the government proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Just because you don't like the verdict doesn't mean the system failed or that the jury was duped.
The reality is that you are using this man's prison sentence as a soapbox to complain about the ATF and the previous political administration. You are ignoring the facts of the undercover sting, the specific condition of the kits he sourced, and Adamiak's conscious actions in order to paint him as a political martyr.
I have said it before, and I will say it again: the *truly only thing needing to be addressed here is the over-sentencing*. Giving a guy 20 years under these circumstances is extreme, and fixing that sentence is a valid conversation. But trying to argue that this entire case is a fundamental miscarriage of justice requires completely ignoring the facts and the established case law surrounding the NFA. It was a clear-cut case of dealing in illicit parts, not a political persecution, and trying to weaponize it as one does nothing to help the actual issue of his 20-year sentence. Additionally, weaponizing this case severly damages future defense aginst actual cases where this may be the issue.
Can you please keep an address posted where he can be reached until this resolved? He needs to know he is not alone.
Thank you, Lee, for refusing to let this story disappear. If the facts are as presented, a 20-year sentence over nonfunctioning collector items is not justice. Tate deserves a real, timely review and meaningful action—not more statements of concern. Due process and accountability have to mean something for every American.
Robert Russ
Abovegroundgear.com
During my 30 yr career we had several cases in which we exhausted all legal remedies. These cases were clear cut and easily solved, if the judiciary would make a truly righteous decision.
In the end it took public pressure and an active stand by a community of people to resolve the matters. Judges are part of an elite community that had no concern for right and wrong. At the threat of real community action , the judge finally relented and applied real law.
Tate’s case is in fact a massive experiment and the American people are being tested to see if we truly believe in our God given rights and our Constitutional system. So far, the elites are winning.
Tate’s family needs to call on a broader community of Americans to enforce our constitutional standards. It is their right to do so. Tate should released at all cost regardless of the level of action needed. If we don’t take care of this, our conditions will only grow worse. If we aren’t will to enforce our way of life, it will be taken away. That’s on us!
This case is far more important than most people realize. Someone should contact General Flynn about this and Jeffery Prather a former Army Intelligence asset and DEA agent. They could help expand the outrage and influence.
Good advice. I shall pass it on to Tate's dad if he hasn't read this already.
I recently wrote to our senator, Mike Lee, with no response in regards to Tate’s situation.I have also written to every conservative commentator on Sirius XM, as well as President Trump and others in the administration with no response, including Harmeet Dillon at the DOJ, with no affirmative response. I will write to the new Attorney General next. Until there is an uproar from many thousands more people on Tate’s case I fear that Tate will continue to languish in prison. If anyone has any further ideas I am more than open to hearing them. I fear for Tate’s safety and pray for him daily.
It looks like Tate must have really pissed off some important person or this would have been resolved by now. Has anyone thought about suing Bodell for misrepresenting facts and findings in a court of law? Or maybe even questioning his so-called expertise? They say the wheels of justice turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine. It appears these wheels have stopped turning, maybe because some loose nut has jammed the works.
Reading your article, you’d have people believe the federal government locked a Navy veteran in a cage for 20 years over a $75 Spanish toy and some museum relics. It’s a compelling story, but it’s a complete straw man. Your piece is a textbook example of cherry-picking evidence and omitting material facts to craft a narrative of a "miscarriage of justice," while completely ignoring the reality of what the government actually proved in court.
To make the ATF look ridiculous, you focus entirely on the least severe items found during the raid—specifically the Denix STEN replica and the inert RPG training aids. By hammering on these items, you create a false perception that Adamiak was just a naive history buff targeted by an overzealous administration.
What you conveniently avoid mentioning is the actual undercover sting operation that led to Adamiak’s arrest. Adamiak wasn't raided because of a toy on his wall; he was investigated because he was operating an unlicensed, underground arms business called Black Dog Arsenal.
You claim he was selling "inert collector pieces" that are "still sold legally online." That is highly deceptive. Adamiak was dealing in demilitarized ("demilled") machine gun parts kits—specifically Polish PPS-43s, Russian RPDs, and Thompson submachine guns. While demilled kits do exist in a highly scrutinized legal gray area, under the National Firearms Act, a machine gun includes any weapon or receiver that can be "readily restored to shoot, automatically."
The government proved that the specific receivers Adamiak was selling were not sufficiently destroyed. In the gun-building community, it is a well-known open secret that certain parts kits are highly sought after precisely because they are easy to re-assemble. With a simple metal jig and a TIG welder, a buyer can fuse the chopped receiver halves back together, drop in the fully automatic trigger group and bolt that comes with the kit, and walk away with an untraceable, fully functioning military machine gun. Adamiak purposefully purchased these specific kits knowing exactly how easily they could be restored.
Most damning of all, you completely ignore Adamiak’s explicit criminal intent. You claim, "He broke no law. He did nothing wrong." But the jury saw the receipts. Beginning in late 2021, an ATF confidential informant emailed Adamiak specifically asking to buy receiver parts with clean cuts so they could be "welded back together" into operable weapons. Adamiak didn't refuse the sale. He didn't warn the buyer that manufacturing an unregistered machine gun is a federal felony. Knowing full well the buyer's intent to illegally re-weld and manufacture machine guns, Adamiak processed the payments and shipped the receivers anyway.
It is also worth reminding you that Adamiak had a full jury trial. Both the defense and the prosecution presented their cases to a jury of his peers. The defense made the exact same arguments you are making now—that these were just harmless historical toys and scrap metal—and the jury simply did not find that argument compelling in the face of the government's evidence.
You can certainly argue that a 20-year sentence driven by federal sentencing guidelines is incredibly harsh. Even the ATF Director has noted the sentence was heavy. But what you also fail to mention is that the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals recently reviewed this case and struck down his appeal on almost every single front, affirming the core convictions. The only charge they vacated was based on a Double Jeopardy technicality, meaning Adamiak is already looking at being resentenced to roughly 10 years.
This case represents a classic example of federal over-sentencing, but it is definitively not the "miscarriage of justice" you are trying to paint it as. Adamiak knowingly supplied the exact, critical components necessary for people to build illegal, untraceable machine guns in their garages, and he did it for a profit. You are relying on omitting those crucial facts to sell your outrage. Your article is not a yell for justice but a simple political attack on a Federal agency.
I disagree, Stuart. And it's not just one article. It's one of more than 60 stories, in which we thoroughly examine every single piece of "evidence" they held against Tate. Give them a read here: https://thegunwriter.substack.com/p/a-current-list-of-our-50-stories
We shall talk again.
Yes, all articles written by your site and in the same slant. I subscribe to you newsletter, I absolutely support 2A, and depending who is in the seats, defending it from every attack. I retired after 33-years military and do not feel compelled to support this guy. Spending time in units in the Beach area, the secret is that he got caught for exactly what he was doing. So yes he should not be over-sentenced, but caught is caught.
Then do not support him, Stuart. It's actually that simple. In the meantime, I shall keep doing everything I can to get him released. After all, he's a completely innocent man behind bars, who was completely railroaded by Joe Biden's ATF for political reasons. Tate did nothing wrong.
And you should, as well as his defense attorney needs to hammer home all the areas he can. This is how our justice system is set up, and in our great country opinions are that, opinions, and we all have them. I have posted how I came to my opinion and stand by it., as I am sure you do too. I do hope that any wrong in his case is rectified and he is treated fare and just.
I think you're glossing over the central problem in this case. It's more serious than federal over-sentencing.
You acknowledge that demilled parts kits occupy a "highly scrutinized legal gray area," but then treat the government's interpretation of that gray area as though it were an objective and uncontested fact. That's precisely where the potential for abuse lies. When criminal liability depends upon an agency's subjective determination of whether scrap metal can be "readily restored," the agency is effectively deciding where the boundary of the criminal law falls.
Your most revealing statement is that certain parts kits are desirable because they are "easy to re-assemble." But what does "easy" mean in legal terms? Does restoration require a jig, a TIG welder, replacement metal, machining, specialized knowledge, additional parts, and hours of skilled labor? How many operations are permitted before restoration ceases to be "readily" accomplished and becomes the manufacture of a new firearm? There must be an objective and consistently applied standard. Otherwise, almost any demilled receiver could be called a machine gun merely because a sufficiently skilled and well-equipped person could reconstruct it.
You also conflate several separate propositions. The confidential informant may have expressed an intention to manufacture an illegal machine gun. Tate may have understood what the informant wanted to do. But neither fact automatically proves that the pieces Tate sold were already machine guns under federal law. Nor does it automatically make Tate responsible for a firearm that another person might subsequently manufacture from those pieces.
If the government believed Tate knowingly agreed to assist someone in illegally manufacturing a machine gun, it could have pursued a charge based on that alleged conduct and proved the necessary elements. Instead, ATF classified the demilled material itself as a machine gun. That allowed the agency's interpretation of "readily restored" to carry enormous weight in converting the sale of otherwise commercially available material into a serious federal felony.
That distinction matters. There's a vast legal difference between selling an actual machine gun and selling pieces of metal from which another person, using tools, skill, labor, and possibly additional material, could manufacture one. The government can't erase that distinction simply by repeatedly calling the pieces a "machine gun."
The fact that Tate received a jury trial doesn't eliminate this concern. A jury decides a case using the evidence, expert testimony, classifications, and legal instructions presented to it. If an enforcement agency misclassifies an object, applies an inconsistent technical standard, or gives misleading testimony about the work necessary to restore it, the words "jury trial" do not magically cure the problem. Juries are an essential protection, but they're not a substitute for clear statutes, objective technical standards, accurate expert testimony, and meaningful judicial review.
The Fourth Circuit's decision doesn't settle the underlying controversy as conclusively as you suggest, either. On the sufficiency of the evidence, the appellate court applied a highly deferential standard. It asked whether any rational jury could have reached the verdict based upon the evidence presented. That's not the same thing as independently determining that every ATF classification was technically correct. The opinion was also unpublished and nonprecedential, and its discussion of the disputed technical evidence was remarkably brief.
You also dismiss the successful Double Jeopardy claim as a "technicality." It wasn't. The government conceded that Tate had been convicted and consecutively sentenced twice for the same underlying offense. The protection against multiple punishments for the same offense is a constitutional right, not a procedural loophole. The Fourth Circuit ordered one of those convictions vacated and directed the district court to resentence him. It didn't determine that he would necessarily receive "roughly 10 years."
More importantly, this case must be viewed in the context of how ATF operated under the Biden administration. During that period, ATF aggressively expanded firearms definitions, reversed or altered prior classifications, and used ambiguous concepts such as "readily converted" and "readily restored" against people operating in areas that had previously been treated as lawful. That's not merely a sentencing issue. It's an abuse-of-power issue.
The danger of a legal gray area is not that everyone within it will be prosecuted. The danger is that the government can choose whom to prosecute. Conduct tolerated when performed by thousands of ordinary collectors and vendors can suddenly be characterized as criminal when the agency selects a particular target. The uncertainty itself becomes a weapon because citizens can't reliably determine in advance where lawful conduct ends and a felony begins.
That's why "caught is caught" isn't an adequate response. Caught doing what, according to which objective standard, established when, and applied consistently to whom? Those questions are fundamental when the enforcing agency possesses the practical authority to decide that pieces of demilled metal have crossed an uncertain line and become a machine gun.
You may reasonably believe Tate exercised poor judgment by dealing with someone who openly discussed reconstructing the parts. You may also conclude that he operated too close to a dangerous legal boundary. But poor judgment isn't a substitute for a clearly defined criminal offense, and suspicion about his intentions doesn't relieve the government of its obligation to prove that the specific objects actually satisfied the statute.
That's what makes Tate's case so important. It's not necessary to portray him as naive or flawless to recognize the institutional danger. His case illustrates how ambiguous laws, discretionary classifications, incentivized informants, agency expert testimony, stacked charges, and extraordinary sentences can be combined against a selected defendant.
That's more than over-sentencing. It's a demonstration of how gray areas in federal firearms law can be selectively enforced to terrorize disfavored people and groups. If the government can decide after the fact that commercially available demilled parts were actually machine guns because someone could reconstruct them with enough equipment and skill, then no collector, vendor, gunsmith, or parts-kit owner can know with confidence where the criminal boundary lies.
A free society should demand more than "the agency called it a machine gun, the jury accepted that characterization, and caught is caught." It should demand clear laws, objective standards, consistent enforcement, truthful testimony, proportional punishment, and especially rigorous scrutiny when an agency is exercising enormous discretion against a politically disfavored class.
That's why Tate's case deserves continued attention and a complete resolution, not merely a reduction of his sentence.
You wrote a lot of words, but your response reads like a rambling attempt to pivot away from the actual facts of the case. You are trying to turn a straightforward criminal conviction into a grand political conspiracy. Let's cut through the noise: people are weaponizing Tate Adamiak's situation for political attacks to distract from a very clear situation.
You spend paragraphs debating the philosophical meaning of "readily restored" and arguing that the ATF is using a subjective standard to trap innocent people. But the definition of "readily restored" is not some new, subjective Biden-era conspiracy. Under the National Firearms Act (26 U.S.C. § 5845(b)), a machine gun includes any weapon which "can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot." The courts have repeatedly upheld this standard for decades. In *United States v. One TRW Model M14* (6th Cir. 2006), the court clearly outlined the elements of restoration—time, ease, expertise, necessary equipment, and availability of parts. The government proved that Adamiak's specific parts kits met this threshold because they were easily re-welded using basic tools and readily available parts.
You are deliberately ignoring *how* this law applied to the specific facts of Adamiak's actions. He wasn't a victim of an unpredictable, shifting standard; he actively sought out and sold specific, improperly demilled kits precisely *because* they bypassed the functional destruction standard. This wasn't a guy selling paperweights who got blindsided by a rogue agency; this was an individual running a business supplying the exact parts needed to easily build untraceable machine guns.
You also try to separate the buyer's intent from the legal status of the metal, arguing that selling parts to someone who wants to build a gun doesn't make the parts themselves illegal. That is a slick semantic maneuver, but it falls apart in the real world. When an undercover agent explicitly tells you they are buying your parts to illegally weld them back into functional machine guns, and you proceed to take their money and ship the parts anyway, you are no longer operating in a "gray area." You are knowingly participating in the illicit supply chain. As established in conspiracy and aiding/abetting case law, your knowledge of the end-user's intent and your material support of that illegal manufacture absolutely exposes you to criminal liability. You are trying to use legal theory to excuse his blatant criminal intent.
Furthermore, you casually dismiss both the jury trial and the appellate court review simply because they don't fit your narrative of a tyrannical government. The jury looked at the actual parts, heard the experts explain the reassembly process under the established legal precedents for "readily restored," saw the communications with the informant, and decided the government proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Just because you don't like the verdict doesn't mean the system failed or that the jury was duped.
The reality is that you are using this man's prison sentence as a soapbox to complain about the ATF and the previous political administration. You are ignoring the facts of the undercover sting, the specific condition of the kits he sourced, and Adamiak's conscious actions in order to paint him as a political martyr.
I have said it before, and I will say it again: the *truly only thing needing to be addressed here is the over-sentencing*. Giving a guy 20 years under these circumstances is extreme, and fixing that sentence is a valid conversation. But trying to argue that this entire case is a fundamental miscarriage of justice requires completely ignoring the facts and the established case law surrounding the NFA. It was a clear-cut case of dealing in illicit parts, not a political persecution, and trying to weaponize it as one does nothing to help the actual issue of his 20-year sentence. Additionally, weaponizing this case severly damages future defense aginst actual cases where this may be the issue.
You’re not addressing the substance of my argument, and your increasingly hostile tone is unnecessary. I’ve made my point, so I’ll leave it there.
it’s unfortunate that a Trump pardon will most likely only happen after a sizable monetary donation is made to his party
I had not seen the Freedom for Tate website before today. I just made a donation there this morning.
It will be hugely appreciated.