Drgrant - no moral outrage here - you know me and machine guns get alone just fine, but no sympathy for the guy at all and the rules should apply to him just as well as us -
I am not saying he should get a "pass" because he is a SEAL. I just think most of the laws regulating these "behaviors" are idiotic.
It'd be one thing if he was selling uncle sam's hardware- that's obviously theft... but the impression I get it was crap the insurgents leave behind when you kill them, or the guns that security contractors frequently trade in.
only he has access to all sorts of nasty toys we aren't trustworthy enough to own...
Well, sometimes. More often than not he's probably disarmed like everyone else is, especially while not in theater. Just because he is a SEAL doesn't mean the CO tosses him a set of keys and says "oh the armory is over there, knock yourself out". When it comes to stuff like that, DOD often doesn't trust people more than it can throw them. Course, who knows what level of access he has.... it could be
minimal, or he could somehow have more access than I realized....
Between access and the hazard of having someone like that potential subject to compromise, I am all for going after people who abuse their position and potentially put us or our armed forces at risk by providing a means of blackmailing/extorting them with their illegal or unethical behavior...
Without knowing the full context of what was going on, it's hard to pass judgment. If his conduct is some real liability relevant to his service, then they should court martial him for it. For all we know these guys could have been
trying to make some quick cash by selling stuff to some guy who was a "gun collector". Who knows what the ATF agent/CI was posing as.
I bet he will plea it down and serve much less than 5 years.
More than likely, possibly even less than a year. but his career is toast and he's going to end up a prohibited person.
ETA: After finding the article I linked below, I rescind this... he's probably screwed, with all the counts....
-Mike