NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — A Virginia Beach man will serve prison time for smuggling machineguns and firearm silencers into the country and then selling them on Facebook Marketplace.
Court documents show, John Patrick Gordon, 36, purchased firearm parts from black-market websites. The parts included Glock switches, also known as auto-sears, which can be used to the convert semi-automatic pistols into machine pistols. Under federal law, firearms that expel more than one projectile when the trigger is pulled are classified as machineguns.
On Jan. 10, 2023, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and Virginia Beach Police Officers searched Dane’s residence and found a shed where he assembled the weapons.
Law enforcement removed 17 firearms from the shed including an AR-15 rifle that had been converted to fire as a machinegun and a Glock with a large capacity magazine with an attached switch. Additionally, they recovered “ghost guns,” or firearms manufactured without serial numbers from the shed.
Dane, who had previously convicted of a felony in 2012, was sentenced to four years in prison.
