The Biden ATF spent years turning law-abiding gun owners into federal criminals.
One Navy sailor just found out what happens when Trump decides to fix it.
What Biden's ATF actually did to put him behind bars is something no one in this country should be able to get away with.
ATF Evidence Tampering Sent an Innocent Sailor to Prison for 20 Years
Navy Petty Officer Patrick "Tate" Adamiak was a decorated Master at Arms who ran a small side business buying and selling gun parts online.
When ATF agents raided his Virginia Beach home in 2022, they didn't find a single illegal weapon.
So they built one.
One of the items agents seized was an inert RPG launcher Adamiak had bought at a California flea market for $40.
The launcher had holes drilled through the tube – exactly where a shooter's face would be if anyone tried to fire it.
ATF technicians then took that gutted prop, patched the holes, installed internal parts from a real RPG, and test-fired a 7.62mm round.
The same ATF examiner performed the same procedure on Adamiak's toy STEN submachine gun – a replica still sold legally online today without any paperwork – firing one round and officially labeling it a machinegun.
With weapons the government had just built from scratch, federal prosecutors charged Adamiak with possessing destructive devices and unregistered machineguns.
"It's my opinion and my family's that the ATF realized they messed up after they didn't come up with a single illegal weapon, so they completely reinterpreted the statutes and implemented new rules to spin the jury and get a conviction," Adamiak said. "They manufactured crimes to convict me."
How NFA Sentencing Guidelines Turned a Toy Into a 20-Year Federal Sentence
Adamiak had zero criminal history.
Under federal sentencing guidelines, that should have placed him in the least severe category.
Instead, prosecutors stacked points using the ATF-modified items as if they were live military-grade weapons, running his total to a range that produced a 20-year sentence – the same exposure as someone convicted of possessing a fully functional machinegun.
"The Biden administration basically just wanted to make an example out of someone," SAF Senior Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
"They picked this poor guy and basically threw the book at him and none of it was even factually substantiated and the government just lied. It was incredibly corrupt, incredible bastardization of the justice system under Biden just because they hated guns."
His trial attorneys were initially unconcerned about the RPG charges.
They were certain the RPG charges were so absurd they would collapse in front of a jury.
They were wrong.
Trump Second Amendment Pardons Free Four Gun Owners Buried by Biden ATF Overreach
Trump's pardon covered Adamiak and three other gun owners convicted of National Firearms Act violations – George Peterson, Jeremy Kettler, and Shane Cox.
None of the four cases involved violence, straw purchases, drug crimes, or anyone getting hurt.
All four involved collectors, small dealers, or veterans caught in ATF's definition-stretching enforcement machine – the same machine the House Oversight Committee documented in 2023 when it concluded the Biden administration had "weaponized the ATF to target law-abiding Americans."
"This is the day Tate and his family have fought for since his conviction [in] 2023," said Second Amendment Foundation Investigative Journalism Project editor Lee Williams, whose nearly weekly reporting on the case kept it alive.
"In no way, shape or form did Tate deserve to be arrested, much less convicted for owning what are considered merely toy firearms."
Trump signed a Second Amendment executive order in February 2025.
His Justice Department spent the following months rebuilding the dormant federal process that had allowed Americans to have gun rights restored after convictions – a process Congress effectively killed in 1992 by blocking ATF from spending any funds on it.
Attorney General Todd Blanche moved that process to the Office of the Pardon Attorney three weeks ago, opening a pathway for the estimated 30 million Americans who lost Second Amendment rights through the federal system.
The Adamiak pardon fits inside that broader strategy – a systematic dismantling of the weaponized enforcement apparatus Biden built, one case at a time.
Tate Adamiak went to jail for owning a flea market toy.
The ATF agents and prosecutors who built a weapon from scratch to put him there have not been charged with anything.
Sources:
- Harold Hutchison, "Trump Pardons Sailor Sentenced To 20 Years Over Toy Firearms," Daily Caller, September 4, 2026.
- Lee Williams, "Presidential Pardon Issued for Patrick 'Tate' Adamiak," Second Amendment Foundation, September 4, 2026.
- Lee Williams, "How Patrick 'Tate' Adamiak Received a 20-Year Prison Sentence," Second Amendment Foundation, May 20, 2025.
- "Virginia Beach Man Convicted for Dealing Illegal Machine Guns," U.S. Department of Justice, Eastern District of Virginia.
- "Fallon: Biden Administration Weaponizing ATF Against Law-Abiding Firearm Owners," House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, October 2, 2023.
- Harold Hutchison, "Trump DOJ Zaps Gun Rights Restoration for Felons Back to Life," Daily Caller, August 17, 2026.
