Rural Chief of Police and County Prosecuter Arrested for Machine Guns

From the Detroit Free Press, in an article about a county in Northern Michigan (a beautiful place, by the way):

Some folks say former Ogemaw County Prosecutor Frederick MacKinnon and his buddies were gun nuts -- a compliment of sorts in this tiny community in Michigan's north woods.

Others suspect the men may have been stockpiling machine guns, silencers and ammunition for a right-wing paramilitary group.

Federal officials say MacKinnon, along with former Chief Assistant Prosecutor Gary Theunick and ex-Rose City Police Chief Maxwell Garnett obtained the weapons illegally and failed to pay taxes on them. The men say they bought the equipment to protect residents.

[...]

he men were indicted in January 2005 on charges of illegally possessing seven machine guns and nine silencers from 1999 to 2004; falsifying firearms applications to make it look like the weapons belonged to the prosecutor's office and police department; and evading federal firearms taxes. The most serious charges -- illegal possession of the guns and falsifying the applications -- carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and $250,000 in fines.

The men -- who bought the automatic weapons and silencers with their own money from licensed firearms dealers and kept them in their homes -- have denied any wrongdoing. They said they bought the equipment with the blessing of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), whose agents are expected to dispute that at the trial. A conviction would bar the men from owning firearms.

[...]

Ogemaw County is one of the poorest counties in the state, in part because nearly two-thirds of its residents are retirees living on fixed incomes, local officials said. Rose City, the county's second-largest city, covers 1 square mile and has 721 residents and one stoplight.

[...]

So they had automatic weapons; I don't think most people around town really care," said Richard Dooley, president of the Rose City-Lupton Chamber of Commerce and owner of the local feed and paintball store, who knows Garnett and Theunick.

Ronnie Burns, a retired truck driver from Rose City, said many residents think the feds are railroading the trio: "Once they get started on something like this, they don't like to stop."Dooley and Ken Morse, a retired construction manager, said gun ownership is no big deal in Ogemaw County, where 517 of the county's 17,000 adults have concealed weapons permits -- nearly twice the Michigan average.

Both men, interviewed at the Rose City Café, a local hangout, pulled out CCW permits, which they said they obtained with the help of Garnett, a certified firearms instructor.

This will be an interesting case that I'll be watching.

By the way, the Free Press had this interesting inset (copyright Martha Thierry/Detroit Free Press):


I was under the impression that the Bushmaster XM15 was a semi-auto, not a machine gun. I may be wrong, though.