Small-town police chief who exploited 'law letter' to mount .50-cal ‘Ma Deuce’ machine gun on own Humvee is headed to prison

Bradley Wendt used his position as a small-town Iowa police chief to buy machine guns that were actually for his personal use and to sell at his gun store (KCCI/YouTube).

A police chief of a small Iowa town will spend the next five years in prison for making false statements to authorities when he said he was going to buy machine guns for his police department when they were actually for his personal use and profit.

Bradley Eugene Wendt, 47, was found guilty in February of conspiring to make false statements and making false statements to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and illegal possession of a machine gun.

Wendt became the police chief of Adair, a town of less than 800 people about 50 miles west of Des Moines, in 2018. He also is the owner of BW Outfitters, which sells firearms.

While machine guns are illegal for the general public, police departments may submit a “law letter” to the ATF to request to purchase such weapons from authorized dealers. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Sothern District of Iowa , Wendt submitted 40 letters over a four-year period saying his department “needed” to purchase 90 machine guns. The size of his department? Two people.

Wendt bought the weapons, but later resold them at his gun store for a profit of nearly $80,000, feds said. Among the firearms he bought for himself was a .50-caliber machine gun called “Ma Deuce” that he “immediately mounted to his personally owned armored Humvee,” feds said. He specifically stated in his letters to the ATF that he was going to use the weapon for official police business and not personal use.

According to prosecutors, Wendt in April 2022 hosted an event at his gun store and charged people a fee in order to fire a belt-fed, M60 machine gun that was registered to the Adair Police Department. The jury found he was not acting within his duties as a police chief when he possessed the weapon.

Defense attorney Nick Klinefeldt in a presentencing memorandum called the case against his client “truly unique” and prosecutors presented a “novel and unprecedented legal theory against Wendt that continues to evolve.” He argued that Wendt was “genuinely interested” in buying the machine guns for the department and used his own money to purchase them. In some cases, he determined some of the machine guns were not needed for the department and sent them back to the dealer. His attorney asked for probation instead of prison.

Prosecutors didn’t buy the argument — and neither did the judge.

“Wendt was held accountable for committing a betrayal of the public’s trust by engaging in this machine gun trafficking scheme for personal gain,” stated Gordon N. Mallory, Acting Special Agent in Charge of ATF’s Kansas City Division. “This sentence sends a loud message to anyone in public service: if they betray their oath of office and their responsibility to their community, they will be held accountable.”

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