David Olofson

David Olofson is a U.S. Army veteran who was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison on the charge of "transferring an unregistered machine gun" after he lent his 20-year old semi automatic Olympic Arms AR-15 style rifle to a friend, Robert Kiernicki.
At the time of manufacture, this model of rifle was legally manufactured with a few M16 fire control parts because these parts by themselves will not cause automatic fire. Olofson's rifle malfunctioned at a shooting range called "The Conservation Club" as a result of the hammer not properly resetting and instead following the bolt forward, emitting multiple rounds and immediately jamming three times in a row. "Hammer follow" is a dangerous and unpredictable malfunction that can happen to semi automatic firearms when a part is worn (or excessively lubricated.)
The quick multiple rounds aroused suspicion in someone at the range that the rifle was possibly an automatic weapon, which are not allowed at many public ranges. Police were called and later that day the rifle was confiscated from Robert Kiernicki at his home.
Court records indicate that Kiernicki testified that Olofson had told him, that the third position of the rifle's firing selector was for automatic firing, but that it had jammed. Kiernicki also testified that Olofson had told him that he (Olofson)had fired the weapon on the automatic setting at that same range without a problem. According to Len Savage, a weaponry expert who runs Historic Arms LLC, BATFE paid Kiernicki an undisclosed amount of money for his testimony.
David Olofson began serving the 30-month sentence at the federal penitentiary at Sandstone, Minnesota in July 2008. All federal courts up to the U.S. Supreme Court have since denied David Olofson's appeals.
==Definition of "machine gun"==
The prosecution advanced an argument, one that it consistently made
throughout the trial, that: “a machine gun is any
weapon that shoots more than one shot without
manual reloading by a single function of the trigger.” whether Olofson’s AR-15
shot more than one shot at the single pull of the
trigger as a result of a “hammer follow” malfunction
“makes no difference under the statute: If you pull
the trigger of a firearm once and it fires more than
one round, no matter what the cause, it’s a machine
gun.”
Olofson requested the court include the definition of “automatically”
set forth in Staples v. United States: “that once the
trigger is depressed the weapon will automatically
continue to fire until its trigger is released or the
ammunition is exhausted.” Refusing Olofson’s request, the trial court omitted the Staples definition, instructing the jury in the language of the statute that: “a machine gun is any weapon that shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be
readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one
shot, without manual reloading, by a single pull of the
trigger.”<ref name="gunowners.com"/>

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