You can say a lot of things about President Donald Trump, but you cannot say he is someone who will let a legitimate injustice stand.
Trump has granted a full pardon to Patrick “Tate” Adamiak, a Navy sailor who was serving a 20-year federal prison sentence following a controversial firearms prosecution during the Biden administration.
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Adamiak, who served as a master-at-arms in the U.S. Navy, was arrested in 2022 after agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives searched his Virginia Beach home.
Federal prosecutors said Adamiak possessed and sold unregistered machine guns and possessed unregistered destructive devices, including grenade and antitank launchers.
He was convicted by a federal jury in October 2022 and sentenced the following year to 20 years in prison.
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Adamiak and gun-rights organizations that championed his case disputed the government’s characterization of several items seized from his collection, arguing that some were inert military relics, replicas or nonfunctioning components rather than usable weapons.
The Second Amendment Foundation also accused the ATF of altering or adding components to evidence during testing, allegations that became a central part of the campaign seeking clemency for Adamiak.
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Trump granted Adamiak a full and unconditional pardon on Sept. 4, ending his imprisonment after nearly four years behind bars.
“The Biden administration basically just wanted to make an example out of someone, 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,” SAF Senior Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“So it was incredibly corrupt, incredible bastardization of the justice system under Biden just because they hated guns,” he added.
The devices in question were inert RPGs that had holes drilled into their receivers and were stripped of internal parts, the SAF said.
“This is the day Tate and his family have fought for since his conviction 2023,” Second Amendment Foundation Investigative Journalism Project editor Lee Williams said in a statement released by the group.
“We have reported on this case on an almost weekly basis since his conviction and covered every angle of the story,” Williams added.
“In no way, shape or form did Tate deserve to be arrested, much less convicted for owning what are considered merely toy firearms,” Williams continued.
“We are extremely thankful the administration saw an opportunity to right a wrong and are grateful Tate is now headed home to be with his family,” he added.
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Gun Owners of America said Friday that Trump also pardoned three additional gun owners convicted of federal firearms offenses under the National Firearms Act.
The gun-rights organization identified the other recipients as George Peterson, Jeremy Kettler and Shane Cox.
All three had been convicted in cases involving firearms or accessories regulated under the NFA, the 1934 federal law governing items including suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, machine guns and destructive devices.
Peterson, a Louisiana firearms dealer, pleaded guilty to possessing an unregistered suppressor after ATF agents searched his home and business in 2022.
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Federal prosecutors said agents discovered the suppressor inside a bedroom safe and determined that it had previously been fired.
He was sentenced in January 2024 to two years in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release.
Peterson later challenged his conviction on Second Amendment grounds, arguing that the NFA’s registration requirements were unconstitutional as applied to suppressors.
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The Fifth Circuit rejected his challenge, and the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal on April 20, 2026. Gun Owners of America was among the organizations that filed briefs supporting his case.
Kettler and Cox were at the center of a separate and closely watched firearms case in Kansas.
Their defense became notable because both men relied in part on the Kansas Second Amendment Protection Act, a 2013 state law asserting that firearms and accessories made and kept exclusively within Kansas were not subject to certain federal firearms regulations.
This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.
