Three years ago Patrick Adamiak was an E-6 in the Navy, on his way to finishing a military career. At 28, he had a private business selling popular gun parts and replica, non-firing weapons. Today, he’s nearing his third year in a federal prison, serving a 20-year sentence.

His life fell apart when the ATF decided to take an interest in him. They raided his home and found nothing illegal, just gun parts and entirely legal, semiautomatic guns. But these were the Biden/Garland years and guns of any kind, and gun owners, were in their crosshairs. An example had to be made and the man to do it was one Jeffrey Bodell who had been an ATF agent for less than two years.  

Adamiak was arrested, charged with possessing unregistered machineguns, among other crimes. At trial, Bodell admitted he had never testified as an expert witness, but the Judge certified him as such. Bodell was essential in railroading Adamiak. With a shaky gunsmithing background, he “proved” Adamiak’s legal guns were machineguns.

Graphic: Sten Gun. Warszawskie, Kraków, Poland - panoramio (162). Wikimedia Commons.org.  CCA 3.0 Unported.

The STEN is a WWII British submachine gun.  Non-firing replicas have long been popular, and to be legal, they must not be able to be converted to functional guns. Adamiak’s STEN wasn’t until Bodell went to work:

Bodell inserted a real STEN action and a real STEN barrel into Adamiak’s toy STEN submachinegun and got it to fire one round, even though the toy’s receiver wouldn’t accept a real STEN magazine. Bodell actually classified the toy, which are very popular, as a machinegun.

Precise definitions are essential to Federal firearm law, but in Adamiak’s case, the ATF decided the law was what they said it was, not what was written:

Bodell fired five of Adamiak’s very expensive and extremely collectible legal semi-autos, which fire from an open bolt. All the ATF technician could achieve was semi-auto fire, but that didn’t stop him. He classified all five highly sought after firearms as machineguns.

Bodell testified that legal semiautomatic guns, which could not be made to fire automatically, were machineguns. But that’s not all:

Bodell ruled that several receivers that had been cut in half were actually machineguns. The same parts are still legally sold online and do not require an FFL or any paperwork.

His ministrations descended into farce when he manipulated two inert, legal, RPG launchers. Without projectiles and firing mechanisms, they’re just metal tubes. But Bodell took fire-control parts from ATF RPG launchers including a sub-caliber training device in the shape of a warhead designed to fire a single 76.2 X 39mm round without mating it to a launcher. He fired a single round from that device and perjured himself, testifying that all those missing parts didn’t matter—Adamiak possessed an illegal RPG launcher:

“It doesn’t matter whether it fires or not, and if it’s missing some component parts, it wouldn’t be relevant to the classification of a destructive device,” Bodell told the court, which is not what the statute or case law state.

How is this kind of perversion of the law possible? It took the willing collusion of federal prosecutors and the judge, people who were presumably capable of reading and understanding the law, but all were apparently determined to make an example of Adamiak.

Retired ATF agent Daniel Kelly is the real thing, a genuine gun expert. Adamiak’s lawyers were largely stymied in their attempts to allow Kelly to testify. Though I’ve not seen the trial transcript, it appears likely Bodell engaged in substantial perjury. Kelly agrees, but has a slightly different take. He believes Bodell, like many ATF personnel, was undertrained and incompetent to testify about technical issues. Politics were also involved:

The ATF needs numbers to justify its existence. Each agent has to produce cases in order to justify their existence. Their training is ridiculous. They’re only taught about 60 percent of what they need to know: make, model and serial number. If you get into (National Firearm Act) stuff, the agents have no idea what they’re looking at. They have to bow to the Firearm Enforcement Officer[s], who are notorious for claiming they’re giving an expert opinion, but they are giving what the ATF said.

Kelly knows Adamiak is innocent:

“The federal prosecutor was shown the law. Any FEO who testifies to something different than that commits a willful falsehood. They are the gun experts of the gun police. They ought to be charged with perjury and jailed, not to mention being fired. This case was the worst.” 

Hopefully, the Bondi DOJ will overturn this miscarriage of justice, and Donald Trump will return Adamiak to his chosen career. It’s even possible perjurers might be punished and those corrupting the ATF fired. It’s a new day—maybe.

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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.