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« Results of Georgia bill allowing carry in restaurants that serve drinks | Main | Harold Fish conviction reversed »

Government drops charges against Kwan

Posted by David Hardy · 4 July 2009 01:58 PM

David Codrea has the story, here.

Short version: Albert Kwan is a legit machine gun collector. FBI or ATF (reports are unclear) raided his house and found two combination holster/shoulder stocks for certain H&K pistols. Kwan owned a registered, full auto H&K of that type; since it was already registered as a full auto, owning or attaching a shoulder stock would be no legal problem (you don't have to register a gun twice because it is full auto and has a short barrel with shoulder stock; one registration per gun is enough). He also had a semi-auto H&K that could take the stocks, and so the gov't charged that *that* gun plus the stocks meant it was an unregistered short-barreled rifle.

Gov't also charged a semi auto M-14 copy was a full auto, but jury acquitted Kwan of that. It did convict him on the short barrel charge. Then the court granted a new trial, finding that it should have given a jury instruction requested by Kwan ... which instruction, I might add, would kill the government's case. So the government finally dropped charges.

· National Firearms Act

6 Comments | Leave a comment

USAF61 | July 4, 2009 3:15 PM | Reply

I hope he had some help with the legal fees. They must have been huge.

Kyle | July 4, 2009 8:14 PM | Reply

"He also had a semi-auto H&K that could take the stocks, and so the gov't charged that *that* gun plus the stocks meant it was an unregistered short-barreled rifle."

Point of clarification - the VP-70Z generally will not accept the shoulder stock of an actual VP-70. Without modifications, at least.... And we know that BATFE would never do that....

Melancton Smith | July 4, 2009 8:26 PM | Reply

So a full-auto short-barreled rifle only has to be registered as a full-auto? Someone misinformed me on that issue.

However, since I live in IL, it isn't likely to be useful information.

doug in colorado | July 4, 2009 8:35 PM | Reply

I suspect that BATFU will not have learned any lessons from all this...another owner, attempting to be law-biding will find himself facing the might of the bureaucracy because he sneezed at the wrong time, causing his semi-auto to apppear to fire an illegal burst...

Don Hamrick | July 5, 2009 6:59 AM | Reply

Can there be a statistical case made to claim harassment of lawfully registered gun owners by ATF with cases like this one? (Where all charges were dropped only after the gun owner's life and reputation was financially, socially ruined? I can use that statistical data in my forthcoming admiralty lawsuit for the Second Amendment as a merchant seaman. I need all the help I can get.

Letalis Maximus, Esq. | July 5, 2009 4:19 PM | Reply

Kwan and the BATFE and the USDOJ go back a long time. This was lifted from another website and I do not verify the accuracy thereof:

"Reading this story you’d think it could have only come from the files of the Gestapo or KGB. It all began with the murder of Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Wales, a leader of the gun ban movement in Seattle, October 11, 2001.

Wales was shot in the basement of his home in Seattle's Queen Anne Hill neighborhood on Oct. 11, 2001. Allegedly, ballistics tests revealed the murder weapon was to be a Makarov pistol outfitted with an after-market replacement barrel. The FBI went on a quest looking for every one of owners of the known 3,500 barrels ever made.

That quest brought the FBI to Belleview, WA gun collector Albert Kwan’s home. The bureau agents wanted to borrow and test fire Kwan’s Makarov pistol they believed was outfitted with an after-market replacement barrel. Kwan refused the request because the gun was new and unfired. Kwan’s reasoning was that this would destroy the value of his property.

The bureau agents really fixed Kwan for his refusal. They obtained a search warrant, kicked his door down and seized every firearm in his home. Kwan legally owned 100 machine guns along with some run of the mill semi-automatic firearms. The Agents took one of Kwan's rifles, a Springfield, semi-automatic M-14 copy, remanufactured the receiver, and installed new parts turning it to a machine gun! Since that Springfield was not registered as a machine gun the agents charged Kwan for the federal felony under the National Firearms Act of 1934. Now that's what you call, being creative!

What the agents really wanted was to “create” a witness to testify against another suspect they're trying to implicate in the Wales murder. Since they have no other evidence, the FBI set out to destroy Kwan’s life."

Your mileage may vary.

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