VFW post won't get seized machine gun back, agents say Tuesday, May 24, 2005 bwalters@kalamazoogazette 388-8563 MARCELLUS -- On folding chairs sat the veterans, some in plaid shirts and jeans, all with medals on their VFW post caps from terrors and glory years ago.
Before them stood federal agents in suits and ties.
On Monday, the two sides argued about a rare 1918 German machine gun the veterans acquired to display in their museum. Unbeknownst to the veterans, it was illegal and evidence in a criminal case.
The gun was seized in February by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The veterans were told Monday they probably won't get it back.
"Am I satisfied? No," Wilber Breseman, a Vietnam veteran and Marcellus Veterans of Foreign Wars museum curator, said after the meeting.
It's hard to miss VFW Post 4054 just south of town.
A military lookout tower, draped in camouflage with a uniformed mannequin looking out on M-40, has a sign that reads, "MARCELLUS VFW. FOOD. DRINK. FIRE COVER PROVIDED."
A 52-ton M-60 battle tank sits on the edge of the parking lot where pancake breakfasts and community fund-raisers often fill a spacious brick hall. A Huey helicopter hovers overhead on a pole, lights blinking.
Two years ago VFW members built a $135,000 museum adjacent to the hall, doing most of the work themselves. They started it a few years ago and opened it initially in an old semitrailer. Now in several rooms, memorabilia from the Revolutionary War to the present are on display, including old letters, uniforms, medals and guns.
The water-cooled, .50-caliber German machine gun was donated to the museum by a Three Rivers-area veteran, whom museum officials have declined to name. When the donor was arrested for illegally bringing guns into the state through an Indiana flea market, the machine gun became part of the investigation, ATF agent Mike Hady said.
"Because that guy was arrested, that particular gun became evidence against him, which left us no choice," Hady said. "Our hands were tied. ... Maybe we didn't do a good job of explaining."
The veterans complained about the ATF raid on the museum, in which four ATF agents and a state trooper came to seize the gun.
"This is how you would treat terrorist cells," Breseman, who identified himself as a "PDF: Pretty Dumb Farmer," told Hady. "That violated our dignity. And why did you describe it as concealed?"
"That was just legal talk for 'located,'" Hady said. "And if I believed it was a terror cell, we would have brought 40 agents. Five is a small number."
The ATF also had told post members their museum wasn't "certified."
Breseman asked what a certified museum was, saying his research showed there was no such thing.
Hady said a museum must be a "government-certified entity" to keep guns listed under the National Firearms Act and that the guns must be registered. The problem with the machine gun was that it was fully functional, he said, and had never been registered.
The ATF found other guns it examined at the museum to be legal. But post members are concerned they could be in a similar predicament with future weapons given to the museum.
The ATF listed the machine gun's value at $10, "another insult," said Breseman, who said it was worth $15,000. "It would have been better if you had listed the value at zero."
Veterans said they're unhappy they are not getting the gun back, but Hady said he had no choice.
"Take it up with your congressman," he said.
© 2005 Kalamazoo. Used with permission