Brookline man charged with possessing homemade machineguns

The feds have charged a Brookline man they say was in possession of eight “ghost guns,” including at least two that had been converted to machineguns.

Stewart Silvestri, 24, appeared before U.S. District Court Magistrate Judge Judith G. Dein on Friday for an initial appearance at federal court in Boston for a charge of unlawful possession of a machinegun following his arrest three days earlier by a State Trooper at a truck weigh station off Interstate 95 in Rowley.

“Mr. Silvestri allegedly possessed eight unserialized and untraceable ghost guns. These dangerous weapons are nearly impossible to trace and directly contribute to the ongoing plague of gun violence we see across the nation and in our Commonwealth,” said U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Rachael Rollins, adding that the fully automatic guns are “capable of causing extreme harm, destruction and even mass casualties in the blink of an eye.”

On Oct. 15, “multiple calls” reported an erratic driver who had pulled into a weigh station off I-95. A responding Trooper pulled up behind Silvestri’s vehicle a little before 10:40 p.m. and Silvestri popped out of the passenger’s side door of his car and allegedly told the trooper that he had just come from an Armory in Dover, N.H., and was tired so he pulled over, according to an affidavit of probable cause filed in the case.

When the trooper asked Silvestri for his license and registration, Silvestri opened the driver’s side door and got in to get the requested documents. With the door open, according to the affidavit narrative, the Trooper saw what appeared to be a pistol-type of gun with a large-capacity drum magazine. Silvestri allegedly sat down quickly in what the affiant said was an attempt to sit on and conceal that and another gun.

In all, according to the court doc, eight privately made firearms — which according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is a gun “produced by a person other than a licensed manufacturer” and without a serial number — with at least two of them examined by the affiant, an ATF agent, allegedly outfitted with metal auto-shears, which allows the guns to fire in fully-automatic mode. He also allegedly had hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Security camera footage of Silvestri at White Birch Armory, where receipts indicate he purchased gun parts and ammo, allegedly shows Silvestri firing one such pistol in fully automatic mode in which he “appeared to be pushed back by the extreme recoil of the discharges,” according to the court doc.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/vZGKSpP