A man who bills himself as the "Picasso of machine guns" and a "self-taught bomb maker" was arrested in Oregon by federal authorities who discovered a fully-functional .50 caliber machine gun in his possession.
Michael Ray Emry apparently posed as a reporter so he could pall around with the Bundy militiamen who occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge earlier this year. Rather than flee the area when the occupation was shut down by the FBI, Emry took up residence where he hoped to begin a pro-militia media operation.
For reasons that aren't known, federal agents raided Emry's van down by the river where they found his arsenal.
Federal court documents don’t disclose what led federal agents to conduct a search of a trailer, truck and car belonging to Emry in a county-owned RV park in Grant County, Ore. During the search, agents found a fully automatic .50 caliber “Ma Deuce” machine gun (Browning M2) under the bed in the trailer,” and its serial number had been obliterated, the documents say.
Emry admitted that he destroyed the serial number after stealing the machine gun from a business in Boise, Idaho, owned by James Weaver, where he worked until earlier this year, the documents say.
Immediately confessing that you stole a fucking machine gun and scratched the serial number off, or even stealing one to begin with, doesn't seem to me like something a normal or stable person does.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Emry admitted to being a bomb maker in 2004 but wasn't charged at the time because he agreed to testify against the man he made a bomb for.
In hindsight, that seems like a mistake. This man is clearly not right in the head.
In a jail interview last week, Emry told [the Oregonian] that “he was known as the ‘Picasso of machine guns’ and was a self-taught bomb maker” whose regular job was repairing car transmissions.
How many would-be domestic terrorists did the Bush administration fail to prosecute because they were too busy chasing phantom Muslim terrorists or pushing liberal attorneys out of the Justice Department?