Further charge expected for Bellevue gun collector

Status
Not open for further replies.
G

gunsmith

member
Joined
May 8, 2003
Messages
5,906
Location
Reno, Nevada
http://www.kgw.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D8M66AQG1.html


Further charge expected for Bellevue gun collector

12/22/2006

By GENE JOHNSON / Associated Press

Federal prosecutors say they intend to bring another weapons charge against a Bellevue gun collector once arrested as a material witness in the 2001 slaying of Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Wales.

Albert K. Kwan has been a person of interest in the killing because sales records indicate he purchased two Makarov gun barrels in the mid-1990s that were like the one used to kill Wales. Kwan has turned over one such barrel, but insists he does not remember buying a second one. Prosecutors said last month he failed a polygraph test.

In September, he was charged with an unrelated count of illegal machine gun possession. The charge stemmed from a search of his home conducted in January 2005, when investigators were looking for the other barrel. The investigators seized several weapons and said one of them — an M-14 machine gun — was illegal.

In court papers filed Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney William Redkey said two of the other machine guns were also illegal for Kwan to possess: a short-barreled Heckler and Koch machine gun, and an M-32, the former of which "forms the basis for an expected superseding indictment in this case."

Kwan's attorney, Joseph Conte, did not immediately return a message seeking comment Friday. He has previously said he believes prosecutors brought the initial gun charge to squeeze Kwan and improve his memory about the other barrel. Kwan, who was held as a material witness in the case for three weeks in January 2005, has pleaded not guilty.

Wales, an 18-year veteran of the U.S. attorney's office in Seattle and the president of the gun-control group Washington CeaseFire, was shot as he worked in the basement of his home in Seattle's Queen Anne Hill neighborhood on Oct. 11, 2001. According to ballistics tests, the murder weapon was a Makarov pistol outfitted with a replacement barrel.

The only publicly identified suspect in the killing is a commercial airline pilot, formerly of Bellevue and now of Snohomish, whom Wales had prosecuted in a fraud case. When Wales was killed, the pilot lived just a few miles from Kwan. Kwan's lawyers have said they do not believe Kwan and the pilot ever met; the pilot's lawyer says he is innocent.
 
I've bought barrels before

and they were stolen out of my car, but I paid cash and you don't need to register a barrel, even in CA.
How did they know he bought these barrels?
 
Apparently from the sales records of the manufacturer.

I'm just wondering if'n the "illegal machineguns" aren't a result of creative testing on the part of the ATF.

I know MGs were legal in WA from '91-94, and any bought during that time. Not sure on the law on SBS/SBRs-I know they're illegal now.
 
He probably bought mail-order. Or paid with a credit card. Or bought at a time and place and in a manner which made him memorable.

If the government decides that they need to be looking for someone who bought a Makarov barrel, you'd be astounded at the list they can put together.
 
If the government decides that they need to be looking for someone who bought a Makarov barrel, you'd be astounded at the list they can put together.
Click to expand...
I recall reading that after the Cali DOJ determined the Makarov .22LR conversion barrels were threaded and thus illegal, they demanded a list of Cali buyers from the firm that had sold them. Of course, the firm responded that since conversion kits are not a regulated item, no such records exist.
 
It never ceases to amaze me how much resources get poured into a murder investigation when the victim is someone "special". The feds would never in a million years come close to this amount of effort in solving the murder of a poor "average citizen". The vast majority of homicides unsolved after this length of time become "cold cases", they get little to no effort unless something new comes to light warranting additional efforts. I can understand the rationalization that is used because he was a fed but elitism stinks no matter where it is applied.
 
I follow the news on this matter, in the Seattle Times.

I've never seen real facts, details posted regarding the charges against this guy (other than obstruction for not talking).

I'm left feeling that all firearm charges that have been brought against him are trumped up, scare/intimidation tactics.

It also sounds like the guy had one great collection, too bad it ended up in the BATFE vault :banghead:
 
After some reading on polygraphy a while back I'm surprised they're cited any more than a tea leaf reading. :barf:
 
I remember in an earlier thread on this topic the ATF technical branch required a different trigger group and a dremel tool to make his rifle into a machine gun. There was quite the hubbub about it on here.
 
Just an update - the Kwan case was heard by a jury this week, and the jurors started deliberations today. The verdict is expected by COB tomorrow.

One interesting bit of info is that the ATF agents testified that it took FTB 96 man-hours of labor in a machine shop plus several different parts to convert Kwan's M14 from semi to full-auto. That must be their new definition of "readily convertible".
 
One interesting bit of info is that the ATF agents testified that it took FTB 96 man-hours of labor in a machine shop plus several different parts to convert Kwan's M14 from semi to full-auto. That must be their new definition of "readily convertible".
Click to expand...
Well, if that's the case, then every shotgun is just ten minutes worth of hacksaw work short of being "sawed-off" :uhoh:
 
If the Feds' warrant was for a screw-in replacement barrel for the Makarov, how can they confiscate the "machine guns"? And if the M14 was in semi-auto dress, how can they call it a machine gun?
 
Last edited:
MiniMooney said:
If the Feds' warrant was for a screw-in replacement barrel for the Makarov, how can they confiscate the "machine guns"? And if the M14 was in semi-auto dress, how can they call it a machine gun?
Click to expand...
I expect they searched the house... and found other guns... decided to check them... :D

Oh and the BATF ruled some time ago that an M14 receiver was a machinegun, even if the trigger group were swapped for a semi-only one; once a machine gun always a machine gun.
 
More info from an older article:

Bellevue, WA, Man Arrested On Weapons Charge by ATF

by Dave Workman Senior Editor

A Bellevue, WA, man has been arrested by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) on weapons charges, and it did not take long for Seattle's two daily newspapers to revive his tenuous link with the slaying of an anti-gun federal prosecutor in Seattle five years ago.

The suspect, Albert Kwan, had once been held as a material witness in the assassination of Thomas Wales, a federal prosecutor who was also the president of Washington CeaseFire, the Northwest's most active anti-gun orga*nization. For months after Wales was murdered, anti-gunners tried to link his death to his gun control activities.

But Kwan's arrest, according to The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer (P-I), is not related to his connection to the Wales case. Instead, this case alleges that Kwan, a former licensed firearms dealer who is now a collector, had an M-14 rifle that the government claims is an illegal machinegun. However, defense attorney Joseph Conte read an ATF document to the court during a preliminary hearing that the gun had to be modified by government firearms technicians before it would fire as a full auto, the P-I reported.

Gun Week obtained a copy of that document, in which the technician stated, "I examined (the firearm) and determined that it was originally manufactured as a machinegun by the Winchester Company in New Haven, Connecticut. (The rifle) can accept machinegun components and has machinegun components installed, but the engagement surface of the sear release has been removed, and the sear release has been welded to the selector shaft. In this condition, (the rifle) is functional as a semi-automatic firearm, but the machinegun parts have been locked in place by the welded sear release/selector shaft.

"To determine if (the rifle) could be readily restored to shoot in an automatic manner, I used a multipurpose rotary tool with a cutting wheel to cut through the sear release. I then removed the sear release, selector shaft, and selector-shaft lock from (the rifle) and installed a sear release, selector shaft, selector spring, and selector from an M-14 machinegun."

The technician did not modify the receiver during all of reassembly, and then fired the gun to see if it would fire full auto. At that point, he wrote, "I discovered that the sear ... did not have an engagement surface for the sear release." So, he replaced the trigger group of the rifle with another trigger group which contained the sear with an engagement surface and eventually got the rifle to fire three rounds with a single press of the trigger.

Kwan's arrest came after a federal grand jury handed down an indictment, and more than 18 months after federal agents had confiscated 16 firearms from his home in January 2005, The Times reported.

Koran's connection to the Wales murder investigation appears circumstan tial at best. As Gun Week first reported almost three years ago, the FBI has been conducting a nationwide search for a Makarov pistol with a replacement barrel sold by a firm in Minneapolis, MN. Kwan allegedly had purchased two such replacement barrels, one of which was traced to him. He was arrested as a material witness in January of last year.

Koran is not a suspect in the Wales murder. The authorities have actually focused more attention on a former commercial pilot, also living in Bellevue, who had once been prosecuted by Wales. That pilot also happened to be a gun enthusiast, but there is no indication that had anything to do with Wales' prosecution of the man and his business partners.

The pilot had unsuccessfully tried to sue the government. He has not been charged, or even labeled publicly as a suspect.

Immediately after Koran's arrest was publicized by both Seattle newspapers, and The Tacoma News Tribune, gun rights activists in Washington complained that the papers were trying to show him guilty by association with firearms.

Meanwhile, the FBI is continuing its search for the Makarov and its replacement barrel. Complicating matters, Gun Week learned when it originally broke the story of that search, is that the killer used the wrong caliber ammunition. The result is that bullets recovered at the scene have unusual rifling marks that, said two ballistics experts at the time, might be impossible to duplicate, even if the right barrel is ever found.

The New GUN WEEK, October 10, 2006 pg 15.
 
Wouldn't it be possible using the BATFE's methods as described to claim that a M-14 stock with no other parts on it was in and of itself a machine gun?
I mean all they would have to do is add the parts from another rifle wouldn't they? no fiddling with a dremmel either.

Jefferson
 
Just got word... not guilty on the posession of MG, guilty of posession of SBR, after deliberating for four hours. Kwan had a VP70 machine pistol w/ spare stock legally as an 07/02 SOT. He also legally had a VP70z 9mm handgun. ATF confiscated the VP70, leaving the spare stock and VP70z. They then later busted him for having the VP70z with the spare VP70 stock as a SBR. Talk about messed up...
 
not guilty on the posession of MG, guilty of posession of SBR
Click to expand...
Sill a felony. Sorry, your machine need a longer tube here. Game over.

I don't know this guy and whether he is a good guy or scum, but still...:fire::cuss::banghead:
 
Bubbles, from what you're saying, it sounds like anyone with an AR and one of those AR pistols would be in trouble if BATFE wants to get frisky... right?

:scrutiny: :cuss:
 
He also legally had a VP70z 9mm handgun. ATF confiscated the VP70, leaving the spare stock and VP70z. They then later busted him for having the VP70z with the spare VP70 stock as a SBR.
Click to expand...
Sounds like a possibility of reversal on appeal, depending on which panel of the 9th Circuit he draws.
 
Can't he work with the premise that SBR's are military weapons and requiring registration is an infringement on the right to bear arms? Case closed. SBR's for everybody!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

G
  • Locked
Another charge against gun dealer
Replies
15
Views
1K
george29
george29
D
  • Locked
(WA) Man Wants To Sell Guns From His Home
2
Replies
31
Views
1K
CleverNickname
C
C
  • Locked
Wash State: "Gun News ad seeks clues in 2001 case of slain prosecutor "
Replies
15
Views
998
SomeKid
S
D
  • Locked
FBI Doing Gun Roundup To Try To Solve Tom Wales Murder
2
Replies
30
Views
2K
makarov1
M
D
  • Locked
Gun Experts Charged With Fraud Over Sale
Replies
4
Views
2K
BigG
B
Back
Top