Oregon Case Shows Gun-Limit Loopholes -- 222,194 Registered Machine Guns In The U.S.

EUGENE, Ore. - The conviction of a father and son for selling illegal submachine guns and silencers produced at their steel fabrication shop shows there are some big loopholes in gun-control laws, officials say.

Ronald Norman Bascue, 49, and Robbie Len Bascue, 23, are scheduled for sentencing Feb. 22 in U.S. District Court in Portland for what federal officials believe was the largest seizure of illegal machine guns in the Northwest.

The pair are accused of selling 54 illegal guns and 63 silencers made at their Albany-area shop.

Federal law banned registration of all new machine guns except to law enforcement agencies after May 18, 1986.

The case shows how lawbreakers can easily produce fully automatic weapons by using legally available mail-order parts, said John McMahon, of the Portland office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

McMahon says the Bascues may have sold a few weapons in Southern California before agents in San Diego were tipped off and set up a "sting" operation.

The agents arranged for a large purchase of guns and silencers ranging from $800 to $1,500 each, claiming the illegal weapons would be resold to drug traffickers in Central America, McMahon said.

The Bascues were arrested May 22. Ronald Bascue pleaded guilty Dec. 21 to two counts of manufacturing machine guns and silencers. His son pleaded guilty to two counts of transferring machine guns and silencers, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Deits said.

The Bascues, who are free pending sentencing, could not be reached for comment. A lawyer for Robbie Bascue declined comment.

Deits said Ronald Bascue began making submachine guns after his Albany-area steel fabrication shop, Steelcraft Trailer Corp., ran into financial trouble.

The weapons were made from parts available through mail-order companies advertising in gun-oriented magazines, Deits said.

Federal law requires that every machine gun be registered.

Buyers must apply to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms for a transfer of registration, which costs $200. The buyer must be fingerprinted and pass a criminal background check that requires about six months to complete, said Jack Killorine, bureau spokesman in Washington, D.C.

The most recent data indicates that, as of December 1991, there were 222,194 registered machine guns in the United States, including 3,382 in Oregon, Killorine said.

But nearly any type of semi-automatic weapon could be modified by an experienced machinist to fire multiple shots with a single pull of the trigger, making it an illegal machine gun, he said.

In the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, federal officials seized 462 machine guns made from semi-automatic weapons, Killorine said.

Some models of commonly available semi-automatic pistols are routinely used for conversion to submachine guns - the term applied to machine guns that fire pistol cartridges, he said.

The most commonly produced illegal submachine gun is based on a design originated in the 1960s by the Military Armament Corp. and commonly referred to as the MAC.

The weapons produced by the Bascues were based roughly on the MAC design, McMahon said.