This looks like another case similar to the 2001 Interordenance raid where the batf approved the import of FAL parts kits, they went through customs and batf inspection then the batf raided the importer and their customers.
I called the Mary Mattlin show at that time but they weren't interested.
By Mike Carter - Seattle Times staff reporter
Friday, June 20, 2003
Federal agents seized crates containing nearly 8,000 machine-gun kits from a Redmond arms and ammunition importer during a search earlier this week, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court.
The weapons were part of a deal between P.W. Arms and a Chilean arms exporter who was brokering the sale of the weapons from the Chilean Army.
According to a search warrant, P.W. Arms had imported 16,000 of the weapons — at a cost of $84 each. The so-called gun "kits" — comprised of a disassembled rifle and including a 20-round magazine and a bayonet — were being advertised in gun trade magazines for $250 each.
Importing the rifles would be legal if, according to the court documents, they had been "deactivated" by blow-torching or otherwise permanently removing parts of the gun that allow it to fire several rounds with a pull of the trigger, according to the documents.
The rifles then could be rebuilt to fire in a legal, semiautomatic mode, in which a round is fired each time the trigger is pulled.
However, the warrant alleges that the Chilean exporter had been instructed by P.W. Arms or one of its partners to leave untouched key portions of the rifles' mechanism that could allow it to fire as a machine gun.
The local Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and the U.S. Attorney's Office is investigating. Attempts to contact P.W. Arms President Stacy Prineas or his vice president, Doug Work, were not successful yesterday afternoon.
ATF agents became aware of the weapons — Brazilian-made FN-FAL assault rifles — after a search in December 2001 of a gun-importing business in North Carolina. That business, Interordnance of America, had purchased another 8,000 rifles from the same Chilean dealer, and ATF experts determined the weapons still were technically machine guns under U.S. firearms definitions.
Last month, the local ATF office was contacted by a P.W. Arms official who told them about the guns in the Redmond warehouse. Investigators suspect that word of the North Carolina raid might have made its way back to Prineas and his partner and Work.
The search warrant states that Prineas had attempted to sell thousands of the parts kits to firearms retailers, and that a few of them suspected that the weapons were illegal.