Patrick “Tate” Adamiak had been a longtime collector of semi-automatic MACs before the ATF raided his home, found nothing illegal but imprisoned him for 20 years anyway.

Adamiak had been an active-duty E-6 in the Navy and was about to enter Naval Special Warfare until his arrest. He also operated a website that sold legal gun parts, until the ATF raided his home. After his show trial, he was sentenced to serve 20 years in prison even though nothing ATF agents found was illegal.

Adamiak collected Cobray, SWD and RPB style pistols and carbines. All of them were semi-automatic and 100% legal, of course. Not one was capable of full-auto fire. He had nearly a dozen MACs, including five that fired semi-automatically from an open bolt. Today, these remain perfectly legal, very expensive and highly sought after by collectors.

Adamiak also collected MAC-style products, such as MAC knives, marketing merchandise, literature including MAC manuals, and build-at-home MAC kits known as “MAC flats.”

A MAC flat is a pre-cut piece of flat sheet metal, which is designed to be bent in a jig or welded to form the lower receiver of a MAC-style pistol or carbine. But turning a flat piece of metal into a firearm is not easy, and requires welding, bending the metal in a hydraulic press and using jigs and other tooling. In other words, making a semi-automatic pistol out of a pre-cut piece of flat metal is not an easy task.

“I never actually completed or built a MAC kit, despite it being legal to do so,” Adamiak said. “They require a high degree of skill and equipment that I did not have.”

Adamiak pointed out that all of his flats were for semi-automatic builds. He ordered them without the full-automatic holes because he rigidly followed federal law. He even put a warning on his website, which told his customers to adhere to all National Firearms Act rules.

The MAC flats were popular on his former website, where he sold gun parts to a large list of customers. He also sold them on other websites and at gun shows.

“I sold them for years,” he said. “I had zero issues.”

As a testament to their legality, when the ATF raided Adamiak’s home, they did not seize a single MAC flat during their search warrant. Instead, they left them all where they were, and Adamiak had hundreds of the flats.

To this day, MAC flats remain completely legal and are sold online to anyone on many websites – without the need for any paperwork, including an ATF Form 4473.

Gun Broker.com offers one for sale today for around $50, without any paperwork.

Prosecutorial misconduct  

Prosecutors used the MAC flats during Adamiak’s show-trial. They painted him as a “brazen machinegun trafficker,” by claiming the flats were illegal machinegun receivers, and that he had sold thousands of them into unsuspecting communities.

Lead prosecutor, Assistant United States Attorney Jessica D. Aber, who was found dead in her home last month from epilepsy, attempted to attribute an additional 977 MAC flats to Adamiak, which she described as “machineguns.” She sought to add an additional 10 years to his 20-year sentence for a total of 30 years in prison.

According to court transcripts, Aber and AUSA Victoria Liu argued that “each of the (flat) receivers constitutes a machinegun under the (National Firearms Act.)”

AUSA Liu told the court Adamiak had 977 of the MAC flats, a number which Adamiak strongly disputes. She highlighted the government’s star witness, ATF Firearms Enforcement Officer Jeffrey Bodell, who had claimed that a toy submachinegun found at Adamiak’s residence during the search was a real machinegun.

Liu allowed Bodell to tell the court, and the jurors, that the flats – which he never even touched – were in fact machineguns.

The two prosecutors and the ATF’s Bodell tried to penalize Adamiak for the flats, despite a 15-year-old ruling that says the flats are not firearms. The judge in that case even ruled, “The court finds that the selling of a flat is not the equivalent of a receiver or frame to qualify as a firearm, because the court finds that flats are not firearms, selling flats is not illegal conduct.”

Adamiak’s witness

Adamiak’s defense witness was former ATF senior official Daniel G. O’Kelly.

O’Kelly joined the ATF as a Special Agent in 1988 after serving 10 years as a sworn police officer. He became a legend within the agency, including a stint as the lead instructor of Firearm Technology on staff at the ATF National Academy. O’Kelly has taught internationally and co-wrote the program establishing the Certified Firearm Specialist for the ATF, while he was at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

O’Kelly is personally dedicated to stopping ATF’s abuses and making the agency better. Prosecutors blocked him from testifying on nearly every other issue, but Adamiak’s defense attorneys were able to get him on the stand to stop ATF’s untruths involving the MAC flats.

O’Kelly broke down the federal rules as they applied to the case and was able to prove that the pieces of stamped metal did not legally qualify as firearm receivers.

After lengthy testimony from both Bodell and O’Kelly, the judge sided with O’Kelly, and denied the prosecutors’ attempt to penalize Adamiak for the “machineguns,” which were legally just flats. The additional 10 years prosecutors wanted for the flats were not added to Adamiak’s 20-year sentence.

Adamiak wishes O’Kelly could have testified about the other false claims prosecutors lodged against him.

“If the judge would have been willing to hear O’Kelly’s testimony about the other 31 alleged machinegun receivers that I’m in prison for, I might not be behind bars in the first place as none of these qualify as receivers either,” Adamiak said. “It’s really sad to experience firsthand what the DOJ will do to sustain a conviction, even when deep down, below the politics, they know what they are doing is wrong. Virtually every fact in my case was smeared or straight up lied about, similarly to the whole MAC flat situation. Unfortunately, due to the sheer volume of bogus claims, misrepresented facts, and lies, I was not able to get the truth out at trial.”

Adamiak’s 20-year sentence still bothers O’Kelly. He pointed out that when ATF agents like Bodell testify, they often leave out the facts, especially when testifying about complex issues.

Said O’Kelly: “On the day of Adamiak’s sentencing, prosecutors were still calling pieces of metal and other gun parts as frames and receivers, which only satisfied a fraction of their own definition. ATF wrote the definition, but ATF never went by their own definition. In Adamiak’s case and others, they did it countless times, for decades, and they put people in prison or it, and they ran people out of business for it. How do you get more unjust than that?”

This story is presented by the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and wouldn’t be possible without you. Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support more pro-gun stories like this.

About Lee Williams

Lee Williams, who is also known as “The Gun Writer,” is the chief editor of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Until recently, he was also an editor for a daily newspaper in Florida. Before becoming an editor, Lee was an investigative reporter at newspapers in three states and a U.S. Territory. Before becoming a journalist, he worked as a police officer. Before becoming a cop, Lee served in the Army. He’s earned more than a dozen national journalism awards as a reporter, and three medals of valor as a cop. Lee is an avid tactical shooter.