Biden's ATF took a $75 nonfiring replica and rebuilt it into a weapon to put a Navy sailor in prison.
What ATF did next in a government lab should end careers and trigger criminal referrals.
When you find out how they built their evidence, you'll understand why the Navy stood by him and Biden's DOJ didn't.
Tate Adamiak joined the U.S. Navy at 17.
By 27, he had been accepted into BUD/S – the brutal training pipeline that produces Navy SEALs.
Outside the Navy, he was building a collection of roughly 150 firearms and historic military memorabilia, with a dream of one day opening a military museum.
He turned that passion into a side business – Black Dog Arsenal – and became a top-500 seller of collectible firearm parts on GunBroker.
His specialty was demilitarized, inert military parts kits – items cut apart or otherwise rendered permanently nonfunctional, appealing exclusively to collectors.
Not one item he sold could fire, and none of it met the legal definition of a machine gun.
How Biden's ATF Used a Paid Informant to Build an NFA Case From Nothing
In 2021, ATF hired a confidential informant with 20 prior felony convictions – paid him $8,000 of your tax dollars – and pointed him at Tate.
The informant repeatedly pressured Tate to sell him a functioning machine gun.
Tate refused every time, explaining he had no Federal Firearms License and could only sell parts.
So ATF found another angle.
Tate had sold the informant some saw-cut receivers – frames sliced apart that couldn't accept components, couldn't chamber a round, couldn't function as any kind of weapon.
Biden's ATF declared these destroyed receivers were unregistered machine guns.
The legal theory rested entirely on bureaucratic preference, not federal statute.
The National Firearms Act covers weapons that "can be readily restored to shoot" automatically – but the law says nothing about how many cuts a receiver must have before it no longer qualifies.
ATF's internal handbook prefers three or four receiver cuts for destruction.
Tate's items had one cut.
Under any other administration, that technicality never reaches a federal indictment.
Under Biden, it became a 20-year prison sentence.
ATF Evidence Tampering: How Agents Built a Machine Gun in a Government Lab
When federal agents executed a search warrant on Tate's home in April 2022, they found his collection: legally imported WWII relics, surplus military parts kits, and replica collectibles.
They found no illegal machine guns.
So they made some.
ATF shipped Tate's inert items to its Firearms and Ammunition Technology Division in Martinsburg, West Virginia.
Agents took a nonfiring, $75 STEN gun replica and converted it into an alleged machine gun – forcing in a bolt from a real STEN, swapping out the replica barrel for a functional one, then manually loading and firing a single round.
One round.
A machine gun must fire "automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading" – that's the legal definition Tate was prosecuted under.
One round, manually loaded, doesn't meet that standard by any reading of the law.
Then there were the two inert RPG-7 launchers.
Both were decorative, missing their fire control groups, with holes cut into their sides to permanently disable them.
ATF patched the holes, installed a new trigger group, then inserted a bolt-action rifle training simulator – not an RPG round, because no federal agent was volunteering to fire that – and declared the device a destructive device under federal law.
Former ATF agent Dan O'Kelly served as Tate's expert witness and didn't hold back.
"The federal prosecutor was shown the law," O'Kelly said. "Any FEO who testifies to something different commits a willful falsehood. They are the gun experts of the gun police. They ought to be charged with perjury and jailed, not to mention being fired. This case was the worst."
The Courts Failed Him. The Supreme Court Walked Away.
A jury convicted Tate on all counts – having seen ATF's reconstructed evidence without knowing how it was built.
Biden's DOJ celebrated.
The Fourth Circuit dismissed his Second Amendment argument in a single sentence.
On May 18, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case without even asking the government to respond.
Tate now sits at FCI Fort Dix in New Jersey, serving a sentence longer than most violent felons ever see.
His own branch of the military never treated him as a criminal.
The Navy declined to prosecute him under the UCMJ, never demoted him, paid him full salary through his personal leave, and gave him an honorable discharge.
The institution that trained him to defend this country stood by him.
Biden's DOJ had no such hesitation.
Trump Made a Promise. Tate Adamiak Is the Test.
In February 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14206, directing the DOJ to reverse Biden-era ATF weaponization and eliminate all infringements on Second Amendment rights.
In April 2026, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced 34 regulatory reforms – the most sweeping ATF overhaul in 15 years – and declared, "This Department of Justice is ending the weaponization of federal authority against law-abiding gun owners."
Every word of that describes what happened to Tate Adamiak.
ATF paid a career felon $8,000 to manufacture a case, converted a replica into a prop, and submitted it as criminal evidence.
A man who never owned an illegal firearm is three years into a 20-year sentence.
Gun Owners of America has launched a national campaign calling on Trump to issue a presidential pardon.
There is an upcoming sentencing hearing where DOJ could move to reduce the sentence immediately.
Trump reformed the ATF on paper.
Tate Adamiak is the chance to prove it wasn't just a press conference.
Sources:
- Gun Owners of America, "Tell President Trump: Pardon Tate Adamiak!" GOA, May 2026.
- AmmoLand News, "Gun Owners Should Write President Trump & Demand a Pardon for Patrick 'Tate' Adamiak," AmmoLand, April 20, 2026.
- USA Carry, "Active-Duty Navy Sailor Serving 20 Years Over Demilled Parts and Replicas as SAF Pushes Supreme Court for Review," USA Carry, May 2026.
- News2A, "Tate Adamiak Needs a Pardon, and New Jersey Gun Owners Can Help," News2A, January 29, 2026.
- AmmoLand News, "How President Trump's ATF Can Help Tate Adamiak," AmmoLand, March 13, 2026.
- NRA America's 1st Freedom, "Year One of Trump – Trump's Second Term Delivers for Gun Owners," America's 1st Freedom, 2026.
- Daily Signal, "New ATF Director Pitches New Gun Regulation Changes," Daily Signal, April 30, 2026.
