ATF Not Alone in Gun Scandals

Looks like the Philadelphia Police have their own little scandal involving firearms:

Officer Anthony Magsam was in a world of trouble. It was August 2009, police sources said, and the young cop with high-ranking relatives in the Police Department had just tearfully confessed to stealing parts from two automatic weapons from the department’s Firearms Identification Unit.

You can probably tell from the part I highlighted where this is going. Rather than reporting the crime, they transferred him to another unit and swept it under the rug. He was apparently (badly) swapping the automatic parts out of guns and replacing them with semi-auto parts, presumably to take them home and convert his personal firearms to automatic weapons. I’m guessing no one told this guy the receivers are different.

Police officers are permitted to have automatic weapons, but only those issued under the authority of a state or local agency. If the Philadelphia Police didn’t issue it to him, it’s a crime to possess otherwise. Police can’t convert their personal weapons to fully-automatic anymore than we can.

10 thoughts on “ATF Not Alone in Gun Scandals”

  1. What a dumbass cop. If he really knew so much about how to convert semi-auto AR’s to select fire or automatic, as he had claimed to his fellow cops, he could have just constructed his own fire control group parts, or drop-in parts.

  2. The real crime here is that he was tampering with evidence, not so much that he was trying to convert his personal firearms to full-auto (which shouldn’t be a crime in the first place).

    All that aside, what a flaming jackass! Every single part he stole could have been purchased on the internet without any sort of background check or proof of NFA tax stamp. Sure, it would still have been illegal for him to possess in tandem with his semi-auto AR’s, but it would have been much harder to catch him in the act. What the hell was this guy thinking?

  3. There are good cops and bad cops in any city. Think about your workplace, and how many people are boneheads. I can’t imagine police work is any different, except the boneheads carry a gun and a badge. What makes departments better than others, I would wager, is a accountability, which fell apart here. But at least Ramsey seems to be doing something about it.

  4. ^This.
    I’ve got a distant relative who’s a cop- works robberies, I think. He told me when he got out of training and into the station, everyone basically told him to go find something to do, so it’s not like police necessarily come in to do a specific job all the time.

  5. Unfortunately Dannytheman is right. I’ve lived in several cities and the Philly police are the only ones that I’ve ever been scared of. A lot of them act like thugs and seem to be looking for a fight.

    Locals have warned me to be as passive as possible if I get detained because the cops will beat the crap out of you if you give them any excuse. People in this city are frightened of the police, which is why there’s such a problem with people not reporting crimes or assisting in investigations. Apparently it’s been this way a long long time and everyone chalks it up to the culture of the city police force.

  6. So when is this guy going to the klink for 10 + fines?

    Oh wait, some animals are more important.

  7. Markie Marxist sez: “What a ridiculous story! Everyone knows that only private gun owners break the law, and they do it all the time! That’s why private citizens can’t be allowed to own guns. Only our police and military should be allowed to have guns, because only they can be trusted. It’s just common communist sense! Just ask my common sense, commie compadres at the Batty Center, uh, Brady Center. They’re not batty! That’s “Brady”. That was a typo, and NOT a Freudian slip! No slip. Typo. Just a typo. That’s all. Typo thing there.”

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