This is screwed…
Webber had previously agreed to never apply for a Federal Firearms License (FFL) and never engage in the business of buying and selling guns due to an agreement reached after he failed to follow some clerical steps in the transfer of a privately owned machine gun. The DOJ/ATF is alleging that he broke this agreement when he used third party FFLs to do gun transfers related to the business.
So because someone makes a clerical error on the transfer of a privately owned machine gun ATF uses that as an opportunity to make that person sign an agreement to never become a FFL?!? So if I screw up on the title process of a car, does that mean I can never become a car dealer?
And the third party FFL stuff sounds like bullshit. He wasn’t a FFL so clearly he wasn’t buying from wholesalers and having guns shipped directly to him. So as a private person he was buying and selling firearms and using a FFL to properly transfer ownership to other buyers just like every other private seller on the internet.
So much for the protections of FOPA 86 I guess. But if they can’t make any of that stick, there is always taxes.
Such an amazing waste of our tax dollars…
Dumbfounding really…
those last six counts may be the bigger issue for him. For the rest there are a lot of unknowns in this release.
According to the logic the BATFE applies in this indictment, if someone lists a firearm for sale on Gunbroker or the EE as a non-FFL and uses a FFL for the transfer, they can be indicted for selling without a license? Granted, there is no agreement in place with the BATFE to not apply for a FFL for most people, but using a third party FFL is the same as any private party transfer between non-FFLs across state lines. I don’t see how this is somehow illegal when it is what the law says you have to do.
Is the new test as a “for profit” operation, like if a person bought a Saiga for $500 and sold it for $1000 on Gunbroker? Does the BATFE consider this to be a “business” now?
This indictment can open Pandora’s box if the charges stick and there is a conviction. Unless there is a whole lot more to the story that is behind the indictment, it seems to be a case of a prosecutor overcharging to see what can be pled down.
I hope Adam has the resources available to him to fight, but fighting the weight of the US Government is like trying to block an avalanche with a cocktail umbrella. This just smells and would be a travesty for all those P7s to be destroyed.
Indictment: http://www.justice.gov/tax/2014/AMWebber_Indictment.pdf
Seizure List: http://www.justice.gov/tax/2014/AMWebber_1AIndictmentAttachment.pdf
If this sticks, there will be a huge hole left in the HK parts market.
C4
I’m not jumping to any conclusions one way or another, but it seems that these cases always end up with some joker who didn’t know when to cut the shit. Valid points on the gunbroker examples, however.
Without the full story, it reads like he avoided prison on a shady MG transfer… There’s been too many cases where you want to defend the guy, but it turns out he was a shit head who had it coming…
Add to that, if you put a firearm on consignment at the LGS and sell it at a profit will you potentially be accused of “engaging in the business” of selling firearms?
If you inherit a bunch of guns you don’t want and decide to have the LGS sell them for you, are you suddenly “selling firearms without a license?”
Don’t know the guy, but upon first take it appears he got on uncle sugars radar with the messed up MG transfer. Then he supposed filed bad tax returns. If I had to guess the bad tax returns are what they are really pissed at and piled on anything else they could think of in order to gain lord leverage over his negotiation position. We’ll drop the FFL crap if you simply pay up… That sort of thing.
It also seems weird that he was brokering gun sales via third party FFL’s. Whether it’s valid or not; there is an argument to be made if you’re repeatedly selling guns through third party dealers you’re engaging in the sale of guns. Which he agree not to do. You can’t sell guns on gunbroker, repeatedly for profit and expect people to believe you’re not engaged in the sale of guns.
Based solely on the information in the article cited, this guy got jammed up back when, cut a deal to save his ass, put himself on the radar with more than a few alphabet-soup agencies, proceeded to start cheating on his taxes, and subsequently got bit in the ass.
Where’s the beef?
So we have an open border, an ISIS member cleaning commerical passenger airliners at Minneapolis airport, a dozen missing jet airliners from the Tripoli International Airport, and this is what our Federal Government spins their wheels about?
Hope and change . . .
His prices were/are always stupid high. I always found other HK dealers with much better prices and better customer service.
Sounds like another niche for you to fill as an Hk dealer!
I stopped counting the P7s at 100, there was easily 20-50 more. Thats a lot of identical pistols to have in a personal collection, I don’t care how rare they are.
It would be very hard to convince me you have all of those pistols and you are not trying to make money off of selling them. It will be sad to see them destroyed, but I would be much sadder about the H&K G41 being destroyed.
When you are walking the line already with the ATF, why go screwing around with the IRS? great way to get the Gov coming for you.
I do feel its a tough case as far as the law, but if the law is that you can’t intend to make money on a gun he is done. I don’t agree with that, that would mean any one who just picked up a 900$ Colt with the intention of selling in fall of 2016 for 2000$ is also breaking this law. Will they get caught, no, will the ATF car? No. Why?, because they are not trying to make money off of literally hundreds of guns.
Sad to see this happen as HKparts.net was what I used for my HK parts.
If the Bullshit NFA Laws didn’t exist in the first place…
I read “clerical errors.” I didn’t read anything about a “shady deal.” I have seen a lot of people unintentionally screw up a Form 4 transfer because they were simply mystified by the process and tried to figure it out on their own. I’ve even seen FFL/SOTs screw up Form 4 transfers and create “clerical errors.”
And while we are throwing stones, how about the NFA registry itself? How many “in house” clerical errors are the ATF responsible for? If the ATF held themselves to the same standard that they impose on others, they wouldn’t be allowed to touch a firearm at all and would be convicted felons.
Depends on the person. Some people who have money will collect multiple copies of a gun to have ones for spare parts. What started off as a couple spares to your backup end up growing to crazy numbers. Or they just have a weird compulsion. Hell, use to shoot with a guy who owned hundreds, HUNDREDS, of Winchester Model 12. People collect strange things. Wanting to own a gross or more of P7s isn’t as weird as some people who collect shoes to me.
I’m thinking of two collectors right now. One has probably 500+ Lugers in his collection and about 250 “recent Russian imports” in his “trading stock.” The other has probably 800+ Colt SAA revolvers in his personal collection and maybe 150 or so in his “trading stock.”
Deep pocket dealers simply have larger collections and more trading stock firearms which they need to do a “right now” deal when a Holy Grail example pops up on their radar.
Should they be prosecuted?
Used to be one could “pull a FFL” to protect themselves from this kind of thing. Then we got FOPA 86 which was supposed to protect us. Now FOPA is being eroded dramatically and few people can pull a FFL for protection against prosecution as an “unlicensed dealer.”
The big problem here is the definitions used by ATF are too subjective and arbitrary. They are not specific enough to protect people and largely are a tool that ATF can apply at their discretion based upon what “they believe.”
So you have Adam who is in the business of “gun parts” (which does NOT require a FFL). At the same time Adam personally collects firearms and like any other collector buys and sells firearms as he builds his collection and disposes of firearms he currently owns in order to buy more desirable examples.
He can’t get a C&R that protects him from dealing with modern firearms so he is out of luck there. He was prevented from obtaining a standard 01 FFL for reasons I’m still not fully understanding. If there was anything “shady” about his machine gun transfer then fines should be imposed or charges filed. I do not see the logic of preventing somebody from obtaining a FFL so that they can “lawfully engage in the firearms business” as a form of punishment for some clerical violation.
If Adam wasn’t in the business of buying and selling gun parts, he’d probably be viewed as no different from any other significant collector who fumbled the paperwork on an NFA transfer.
Bottom line is unless he really was illegally importing firearms and engaged in actual smuggling, FOPA should protect him. In a logical world, ATF should have MANDATED that he obtain a 01 FFL simply because they determined his business was “close to the line.” He would have become a dealer, started dealing in firearms as well as parts as “part of his business” and that would be that. Problem solved.
Where are you guys getting the “selling for a profit = criminal” thing from?
This is the part that has my attention.
So, he’s higher than a cat’s back on Halloween? He who has the supply, gets the price he demands.