Posted on 06/18/2003 7:51:38 AM PDT by El Laton Caliente
REDMOND, Wash. -- ATF agents stormed into an Eastside business early this morning -- and they were tight lipped about what they're hunting for.
They're still there tonight -- packing up many boxes of evidence.
ATF agents say this is just routine enforcement -- but it looks like much more.
It's all happening in Redmond, Redmond Police are on the scene helping with traffic and security.
Sources tell us that it's the makings of serious weapons that spurred this raid."
"Next thing I know there was ATF people all over the place," said eyewitness Gary Wilson.
Those agents zeroed in on this place -- in a Redmond industrial park.
We've learned it belongs to a business called P-W Arms Incorporated -- that deals in ammunition.
A man who doesn't want to be identified says he's seen piles of old ammo inside.
"Enough to fill a couple of 48 foot trailers -- maybe two or three," he said.
ATF agents, most of them undercover, came prepared for a big haul.
"There was probably a hundred of those officers here - and they swarmed in and evidently there was 6 of these trucks lined up in the street waiting," said John Bovee.
All day they've been hauling crates out of the business. Sources tell us what they found here is guns -- imported in separate pieces so they're legal -- but the parts can be put together to create illegal assault rifles.
Officially -- ATF won't say much at all.
"Only thing I can say right now is that we have an ongoing investigation," said Matt Horace, ATF agent.
The number of agents is large -- the stacks of evidence keep growing -- and the work doesn't seem to be slowing down. Still, ATF insists this is a routine enforcement action-- and people shouldn't worry.
"There's no imminent threat to public safety and we'll be here as long as it takes to conduct our investigation," Horace said.
So far agents have been on the scene about 8 hours. Again, ATF officials won't confirm what this is all about.
But a source tells us this raid is not in connection with a large crime ring or terrorism
Be careful -- National Firearms Act, 26 USC section 5845, DEFINITIONS-- defines "machinegun" to include "...any part designed and intended solely and exclusively, or combination of parts designed and intended, for use in converting a weapon into a machinegun,...."(bold added)
Source -- Gun Laws of America, by Alan Korwin.
I could be eaten by a huge bear.
When I am finished with my novel, I would really like you to walk over to your bookshelf and compile a list of ten or so "must-reads" for my continuing education.
Feel free to follow my thoughts here anytime, as easy as hitting the *find in forum* link, though you'll find some repitition and quite a few typos.
I'd be glad to point you at a *top ten* list on most any given subject, though I'd be less inclined to do so as a general recommendation- if two friends would ask me for such a list, I'd try to point them toward similar but probably differing lists, based on their levels of understanding and experience; I'm not inclined to suggest tomes on do-it-yoursel heart surgery.
But it looks like I may be taking a *columnist at-large* position soon, so my spouting may be an unfortunatly too-common thing to behold.
There's one writer whose fairly recent loss I feel in particular, who I hope you've encountered before; if not, go through some of his collected work and enjoy. It's unpolished [mostly] and there's some reflexive, almost stream-of-consciousness outpouring that impresses me particularly, something I'd never try to get away with myself. See the link at the end of this post.
And FWIW, your novel is likely going to be high on my list of suggestions, based on the snippets I've read so far [I avoided reading all of the teasers you've got available, just so I don't spoil the effect for myself when I do have a copt in hand.] I've bounced a couple of novel ideas around but am horrible at composing dialog between characters- it always comes out sounding too much like I'm talking to myself, so I leave such things to those better suited to that sort of thing.
-archy-/-
But the third sister, who is also the youngest! Hush! Whisper whilst we talk of her! Her kingdom is not large, or else no flesh should live; but within that kingdom all power is hers. Her head, turreted like that of Cybele, rises almost beyond the reach of sight. She droops not, and her eyes rising so high might be hidden by distance. But, being what they are, they cannot be hidden; through the treble veil of crepe which she wears, the fierce light of a blazing misery, that rests not for matins nor for vespers, for noon of day or noon of night, for ebbing or for flowing tide, may be read from the very ground. She is the defier of God. She is also the mother of lunacies and the suggestress of suicides. Deep lie the roots of her power, but narrow is the nation she rules. For she can approach only those in whom a profound nature has been unheaved by central convulsions, in whom the heart trembles and the brain rocks under conspiracies of tempest from without and tempest from within. Madonna moves with uncertain steps, fast or slow, but still with tragic grace. Our Lady of Sighs creeps timidly and stealthily. But this youngest sister moves with incalculable motions, bounding, and with a tiger's leaps; She carries no key, for though coming rarely amongst men, she storms all doors at which she is permitted to enter at all.-- Thomas de Quincey, from Suspiria de Profundis
History is largely about human perception and I speak as a teacher of American History and sociology. But remember the era of which we speak. Was the police department an honored organization in the opinion of the nation's youth (draft age)? Uh-Uh. They were called FUZZ or PIG and more and more were in direct and bloody conflict with the youth whenever the moratoriums and sit-ins left campus and took to the city streets against the war in Vietnam. Even on campus there were many conflicts (remember Kent State? That started with the cops and escalated to the guard).
As late as the 1970's when I first took on the notion of being in law enforcement (a dream I wouldn't realize until 1986 after I got off active duty) and discovered that a requirement for the Miami Police was prior service or a college degree in lieu of military service. This was before massive minority and female recruitment changed those standards in the early 1980's.
In case of what? In case Hillary becomes President and gives the BATF national marching orders a la WACO. Does that make me a marginalized paranoid? Probably. But as a dedicated teacher of history, I'm also a student of history and the history of tyranny is entwined with gun control. It is ugly, bloody and often repeated...and we just never seem to learn!
A few years ago, I watched TV coverage of a Detroit-area BATFE raid on "motorcycle gang gun runners". Maybe all the "good stuff" had been hauled away by the feds, but all they showed were two Marlin 336s and a tubular mag .22 being put in the trunk of a cop car. The BATFE spokesman promised a TV and press news conference the next day. It never happened, and not a word was ever said about the bikers. My guess is the "charges" were dropped in exchange for the two chubby, long-haired white guys becoming snitches for the FBI.
Because it is so easy to run afoul of technicalities (and whims) of the BATFE, they are used to recruit snitches for the FBI. That's what was intended for Randy Weaver until things got out of hand.
I can see how morale can be down inside the BATFE. Not only are they a five-letter agency, but they also do a lot of work pimping for the FBI, a three-letter agency.
L
I happen to live right outside Philly, and am about at the highest point around. This gave me a very good seat for that "show". I even had a ladder up and a lawn chair on the roof watching the whole fiasco unfold that evening. What happened with MOVE (which, incidentally, means nothing) was more of an "OH S**t" deal instead of a JBT action.
This "group" had been shut down by Frank Rizzo(then the colorful, even if Democrap mayor of Philly) after a police officer had been killed. It was, by all standards, pretty spectacular, within 12 hours the house was gone and the lot paved over with asphalt (not uncommon for that period of time).
The '85 standoff started escalating from 0 to apocalypse in about 4 months. The group had installed loudspeakers on the property, and were screaming obscenity 24/7, in addition to no working toilets, a lot of health hazards, and general squalor. The neighbors, rather naturally got highly irritated and demanded the city do something. The mayor at that time was Wilson Goode, who would make a better minister than a mayor (Think Jimmy Carter). The police chief (Gregore Sambor) had an ego bigger than the damn city,(Anyone who stands in the middle of the street at 0630 and yells "Attention MOVE, this is America" definitely is missing a few cards out of the deck.
At any rate, there were a huge number of cops there, and at some point, which to this day, I don't believe has been determined, a shot was allegedly fired. OK, now you had to have been around to believe this, but over 10,000 rounds were fired in less than 1/2 an hour. This being said, I also know some Upper Darby cops who were on duty at a park next to Cobbs Creek, which fortunately has about an 8' hill (a real effficient backstop, it turned out) because these guys were literally scared s**tless by the rounds being fired without the people firing giving any thought to where the hell they were going...most wound up in the aforesaid dirt hill, to the relief of the Upper Darby cops who were eating dirt and praying extremely hard about that point. The firing stopped because the Philly cops basically ran out of ammo.
After that, nothing really happened all day, until the evning, when the infamous "bunker" was deemed a hazard, and someone came up with the idea of dropping a satchel charge. A small fire evidently started, and the Fire Comissioner, in another stroke of genius decided to "let the bunker burn" The rest, of course is history. From the viewpoint I had it was unbelievable. It turned into a firestorm. What has to be understood is these were all row houses, mostly identical to the same kind I live in in Upper Darby. They have been around since the late '20's and most have about 30 layers of flat roofs (code, we don't care about any steeenking code)..So you have one bodacious tar barrel. There are firewalls, and pretty good ones, between the houses, but a lot of the houses there were abandoned (That particular area of Philly looked like Beirut, you could film a decent post apocalyptic movie there), with burned out shells of houses, boarded up houses, and well kept houses virtually together. Since all the residents had been evacuated the night before, there was no chance of homeowners keeping sparks from setting their houses on fire. What happened then, of course, is that a domino effect set in, and next morning there were about 3 blocks and more of smoking rubble. Two people got out of the house, and whoever else was inside was pretty much reduced to unrecognizable charred matter.
Hearings for this lasted for weeks, and a lot of heads rolled, but, to this day, I believe this wasn't so much intentional as a whole lot of stupid idiots making one more poor decision after another. There were several movies made about this, but IMHO, the only thing I would have loved to see, and probably really happened during this fiasco would have been a shot of a cop and a fireman at the end of one of the streets, looking at what was happening, when the horrible truth that something monstrous and unstoppable was occurring, struck home, that one just looked at the other and said "OH F**k" (fade to black).
The MOVE thing wasn't a JBT action, it was a confluence of idiots who, given the choice of several all bad decision choices, chose the most destructive one. It was, however, from my roof at least, an unbelievably spectacular event, rivaling most of what I witnessed in the military.
As the old saw says "you had to see it to believe it"
Keep the Faith for Freedom
Greg
By Mike Carter - Seattle Times staff reporter
Friday, June 20, 2003
Federal agents seized crates containing nearly 8,000 machine-gun kits from a Redmond arms and ammunition importer during a search earlier this week, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court.
The weapons were part of a deal between P.W. Arms and a Chilean arms exporter who was brokering the sale of the weapons from the Chilean Army.
According to a search warrant, P.W. Arms had imported 16,000 of the weapons — at a cost of $84 each. The so-called gun "kits" — comprised of a disassembled rifle and including a 20-round magazine and a bayonet — were being advertised in gun trade magazines for $250 each.
Importing the rifles would be legal if, according to the court documents, they had been "deactivated" by blow-torching or otherwise permanently removing parts of the gun that allow it to fire several rounds with a pull of the trigger, according to the documents.
The rifles then could be rebuilt to fire in a legal, semiautomatic mode, in which a round is fired each time the trigger is pulled.
However, the warrant alleges that the Chilean exporter had been instructed by P.W. Arms or one of its partners to leave untouched key portions of the rifles' mechanism that could allow it to fire as a machine gun.
The local Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and the U.S. Attorney's Office is investigating. Attempts to contact P.W. Arms President Stacy Prineas or his vice president, Doug Work, were not successful yesterday afternoon.
ATF agents became aware of the weapons — Brazilian-made FN-FAL assault rifles — after a search in December 2001 of a gun-importing business in North Carolina. That business, Interordnance of America, had purchased another 8,000 rifles from the same Chilean dealer, and ATF experts determined the weapons still were technically machine guns under U.S. firearms definitions.
Last month, the local ATF office was contacted by a P.W. Arms official who told them about the guns in the Redmond warehouse. Investigators suspect that word of the North Carolina raid might have made its way back to Prineas and his partner and Work.
The search warrant states that Prineas had attempted to sell thousands of the parts kits to firearms retailers, and that a few of them suspected that the weapons were illegal.
Pre-Y2K, I picked up a few boxes of M2 ball, but haven't been able to get to a gun show to find anything more exotic. I sure won't be putting it on a credit card, if you catch my drift. Reckon an old bolt rifle will have to do, but you can see trouble coming from a long ways off in these parts.
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