Patrick “Tate” Adamiak, George Peterson, and others are set to walk free after receiving a pardon from President Donald Trump, ending years of federal prosecution that 2A advocates have long described as regulatory overreach rather than ordinary crime-fighting.
Patrick “Tate” Adamiak is a former active-duty Navy E-6 (Petty Officer 1st Class, Master-at-Arms) who was accepted to BUD/S. In April 2022, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents raided his Virginia Beach home after a paid confidential informant facing his own felony charges told the ATF that Adamiak had an Mk-19 grenade launcher. That report produced a search warrant.
Agents found cut-up and demilled parts kits, including PPSh-41-style kits sold to the informant; inert and DEWAT RPG-7 launchers and M79/M203-related items; a Denix non-firing STEN replica; pre-ban open-bolt semi-auto MAC-style pistols and carbines; two IMI Uzi carbines with display barrels; and several unfinished MAC “flats,” which are sheet-metal pieces.
Adamiak was charged with five counts, including receiving or possessing an unregistered firearm and transferring a machine gun tied to the PPSh-41 parts, plus three counts of receiving or possessing unregistered destructive devices involving an M79, an M203, and two RPGs. The jury convicted him on all five.
Sentencing stacked 10 years consecutive on the two machine-gun counts and ran the destructive-device counts concurrently, producing 20 years plus three years of supervised release. Prosecutors originally sought enhancements that would have pushed the range toward 30 years or life by treating hundreds of MAC flats as machine guns. Former ATF official Daniel O’Kelly’s testimony helped block that extra decade.
Adamiak and his supporters argue he sold only non-FFL gun parts and collectibles, never a completed firearm, and that the ATF classified items as machine guns or destructive devices only after agents added barrels, bolts, or other parts and test-fired them. They note that many of the same items remain commercially available without paperwork. Adamiak has said he never sold anything that required an FFL.
🚨BREAKING🚨
Multiple sources confirm that President Trump has signed pardons for the following gun owners, convicted of unconstitutional “crimes” under the National Firearms Act:
– Patrick “Tate” Adamiak
– George Peterson
– Jeremy Kettler
– Shane CoxThank you Mr. President! https://t.co/Wo5kVcF3Ft
— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) September 4, 2026
ATF Firearms Enforcement Officer Jeffrey Bodell’s trial testimony classifying the Denix STEN and other items has been a central point of attack.
Current ATF Director Robert Cekada has publicly called the 20-year sentence excessive, saying typical NFA possession cases without violence or organized crime land in the three-to-five-year range and that Adamiak treated the items as curios with no evidence of unlawful use.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit found double jeopardy on Counts 1 and 2 because the same PPSh-41 item was charged under both 26 U.S.C. § 5861(d) and 18 U.S.C. § 922(o). The court vacated Count 1 and remanded for resentencing. The remaining convictions were affirmed. The United States Supreme Court denied certiorari in May 2026. District Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen of the Eastern District of Virginia in Norfolk vacated Count 1 in December 2025 and set a resentencing date. She later canceled the June 25, 2026, hearing, ruled that prior objections could not be relitigated, and continued the matter. The government asked the court to reimpose a 20-year term. Several House members, including Jen Kiggans, Eli Crane, Eric Burlison, Paul Gosar, Rob Bresnahan, and Daniel Webster, wrote to the Justice Department and the pardon attorney urging consideration.
George Peterson was an FFL in Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, who ran PDW Gun Solutions LLC out of his Waggaman home. He became a test case for whether the National Firearms Act’s suppressor registration and tax scheme survives Bruen. He lost at every level.
The ATF spent months investigating Peterson’s storefront sales, including unreported multiple-handgun sales and at least one undercover buy in which a confidential informant handed money to an agent in front of him for pistols. A magistrate issued a warrant in June 2022. Agents, described by Peterson as a large tactical team with rifles pointed at him and his children, then ages 12, 16, and 18, searched the home and business.
In a bedroom closet safe, they found a homemade, unserialized suppressor, often described as a milled solvent-trap kit, that had been fired. It was not in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record. That item, not the sales-reporting issues in the warrant affidavit, became the sole charge.
A grand jury in the Eastern District of Louisiana indicted him under 26 U.S.C. §§ 5841, 5861(d), and 5871 for possessing an unregistered silencer.
District Judge Jay C. Zainey denied his motion to dismiss, which raised a Second Amendment challenge to the NFA scheme, and his motion to suppress, which raised a Fourth Amendment challenge to the warrant. Peterson entered a conditional guilty plea, reserving the right to appeal those two rulings. On January 9, 2024, he was sentenced to 24 months in prison plus three years of supervised release. The guideline range was 18 to 24 months.
A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit first affirmed the conviction on February 6, 2025. It later withdrew that opinion and issued a substituted opinion dated August 27, 2025, and again on December 9, 2025, after en banc review was denied. The court held that suppressors are firearm accessories, not “Arms” protected by the Second Amendment. Therefore, the NFA’s registration and tax regime does not implicate the right to keep and bear arms. The court also applied the good-faith exception and refused to suppress the suppressor. En banc rehearing was denied December 9, 2025.
That “accessories are not arms” line is what made the case nationally significant. Second Amendment groups including Firearms Policy Coalition, Gun Owners of America, the Second Amendment Foundation, the American Suppressor Association, the NRA, and others argued the panel sidestepped Heller and Bruen and treated millions of commonly owned suppressors as outside the Amendment. At times the government framed the NFA as a shall-issue licensing regime.
Peterson petitioned for certiorari, with Cooper & Kirk and David Thompson as counsel of record and amicus support from GOA, SAF, and others. The United States waived a response. The Court denied certiorari on April 20, 2026. That ended the direct appeal.
Taken together, the two cases illustrate how NFA classifications, informant-driven warrants, and stacked sentencing can convert parts, replicas, and an unregistered homemade suppressor into multi-year federal prison terms even when no violence, trafficking ring, or completed commercial machine-gun sale is alleged. Adamiak’s file turned on whether demilled kits and inert launchers became regulated weapons after government testing. Peterson’s file turned on whether a solvent-trap conversion found in a closet safe justified two years behind bars after a raid aimed at paperwork violations. In both matters, appellate courts left the convictions standing while leaving the policy fight to Congress, the ATF, and the pardon power.
The pardons show the Trump administration’s willingness to push back against legal abuses by the former Biden Department of Justice and to treat these prosecutions as sentences that outran the conduct. For Adamiak, clemency ends a 20-year term that even the current ATF director called excessive. For Peterson, it ends a two-year sentence that 2A groups used to argue suppressors belong inside, not outside, the Second Amendment.
The grants will not rewrite the Fourth or Fifth Circuit opinions, but they restore liberty in two of the most closely watched NFA cases of the last decade and signal that regulatory possession cases without violence will no longer be treated as equivalent to terrorism or organized crime.
Gun Owners Should Write President Trump & Demand a Pardon for Patrick “Tate” Adamiak
About John Crump
Mr. Crump is an NRA instructor and a constitutional activist. John has written about firearms, interviewed people from all walks of life, and on the Constitution. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons, follow him on X at @right2bear, or at www.crumpy.com.
