Trump Agrees To Pardon Sailor Hit With Massive Sentence Over Inert Firearms

President Donald Trump has once again used his constitutional pardon authority to address what gun-rights advocates describe as a grave miscarriage of justice.

Trump granted a full and unconditional pardon to Patrick “Tate” Adamiak, a Navy sailor sentenced to 20 years in federal prison following a disputed firearms prosecution pursued during the Biden administration.

Adamiak served as a master-at-arms in the U.S. Navy before Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents searched his Virginia Beach residence and arrested him in 2022.

Federal prosecutors accused Adamiak of possessing and selling unregistered machine guns and illegally possessing unregistered destructive devices, including grenade and antitank launchers.

A federal jury convicted him in October 2022, and he received a 20-year prison sentence the following year.

Adamiak and the Second Amendment organizations that rallied behind him rejected the government’s description of several items seized from his collection. They maintained that some of the objects were inert military artifacts, replicas, or nonfunctioning components rather than operational weapons.

The Second Amendment Foundation further alleged that ATF personnel altered evidence or added components during testing. Those accusations became a significant part of the public campaign urging the administration to grant Adamiak clemency.

Trump issued the pardon on Sept. 4, bringing Adamiak’s imprisonment to an end after he had spent 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.

According to the Second Amendment Foundation, the disputed devices included inert rocket-propelled grenade launchers that had holes drilled through their receivers and had been stripped of internal components.

“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.

Adamiak was not the only gun owner to receive relief from President Trump. Gun Owners of America announced Friday that the president had pardoned three additional individuals convicted of federal firearms offenses under the National Firearms Act.

The organization identified them as George Peterson, Jeremy Kettler, and Shane Cox.

Each had been prosecuted in a case involving weapons or accessories regulated under the NFA, the sweeping 1934 law covering suppressors, short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, machine guns, and destructive devices.

Peterson, a firearms dealer in Louisiana, pleaded guilty to possessing an unregistered suppressor after ATF agents searched his residence and business in 2022.

Prosecutors said agents discovered the suppressor inside a bedroom safe and determined that it had previously been fired. Peterson was sentenced in January 2024 to two years in federal prison, followed by three years of supervised release.

He later challenged the conviction on Second Amendment grounds, contending that applying the NFA’s registration requirements to suppressors violated the Constitution.

The Fifth Circuit rejected his claim, and the Supreme Court declined to consider his appeal on April 20, 2026. Gun Owners of America was among the groups that submitted briefs supporting Peterson’s position.

Kettler and Cox were involved in a separate high-profile federal firearms case originating in Kansas.

Their defense attracted national attention because both men relied partly on the Kansas Second Amendment Protection Act. Enacted in 2013, the state law asserts that firearms and accessories manufactured and retained exclusively within Kansas are beyond the reach of certain federal gun regulations.

Trump’s pardons offer another clear contrast with the Biden administration’s record of aggressive federal firearms enforcement. They also send a broader message that the government’s power cannot be allowed to trample constitutional rights or destroy lives without scrutiny.

For Adamiak and his family, that message has now produced something tangible: freedom after nearly four years in federal custody.