MIAMI (CN) - A Florida man prosecuted for possessing a machine gun asked an 11th Circuit panel Tuesday to overturn his conviction, arguing he merely had a conversion device attached to an otherwise legal Glock handgun.

"Now, I imagine that most folks hear machine gun and clutch their pearls," Ta'Ronce Stowes, a federal public defender representing Maxon Alsenat, told a three-judge panel. "But let me be clear, what we're talking about here is a machine gun conversion device or MCD. A MCD is typically no bigger than the tip of your thumb. MCDs make small arms more useful for elderly householders and others who are too frightened to draw a careful bead on an intruder."

Alsenat's conviction stems from selling three machine gun conversion devices to an undercover agent for $1,500 in June 2023. Alsenat pleaded guilty to possessing a machine gun, a violation of federal statute 18 U.SC. 992(o)(1). The 29-year-old was sentenced to two years in prison and is currently free on a three-year probation.

Stowes argued the machine gun conversion device was similar to a silencer and "isn't necessary to enable a firearm to function."

"We're talking about a machine gun conversion device that isn't going to be attached to another machine gun," Stowes said. "It's going to be attached to a semiautomatic firearm."

U.S. Circuit Judge Nancy Abudu, a Joe Biden appointee, pushed back on the public defender's assertion because the device essentially creates a machine gun.

"Which courts have found to be a much more dangerous weapon that makes sense for the military or if you're in some armed conflict," Abudu said. "But if you are a regular homeowner, do you need a machine gun that can spray the entire living room or the kitchen, even if you're elderly? How is that not dangerous, unduly dangerous, for purposes of gun regulation?"

"Well, dangerous, I believe, is a bit of a red herring, because everything is inherently dangerous," Stowes answered.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Justin Silverberg, representing the federal government, argued the appellate court only needs to look at the landmark 2008 Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which found a ban on the possession of handguns unconstitutional but allowed for the prohibition of "dangerous and unusual" firearms.

"Yes, of course, a firearm is dangerous," Silverberg said. "The government's not going to contend that they're not. However, there's also an unusual element that Heller read into this area of law and the unusual part goes to two various things.

"It goes to who's using the weapon and what are they used for," he continued, describing how machine guns reached the streets of the United States after World War I. "These were never used by lawfully abiding citizens for self-defense. These have always been, throughout their history, used by criminals to further criminal enterprises."

During his rebuttal, Stowes alluded to the federal government challenging bans on assault rifles.

"I say that's ironic because the complaint here is that a machine gun can spray thousands of bullets and harm a bunch of innocent people at one time," Stowes said. "Well, if you take an AR-15 with a large-capacity magazine that's protected by the Second Amendment, and you take one of these legal bump stocks and put it on there, you achieve the same result."

In 2024, the Supreme Court overturned a federal ban on bump stocks, because semiautomatic rifles with the accessory are not considered machine guns since they only fire one bullet per each trigger pull.

Chief U.S. Circuit Judge William Pryor was not convinced.

"But the problem for you is that Heller spoke very directly to machine guns," said the George W. Bush appointee. "And not only did it say that there is an historical tradition of regulating dangerous and unusual weapons, not only did it say it would be startling to conclude that restrictions on machine guns might be unconstitutional, but it also said weapons that are most useful in military service, M16 rifles and the like, may be banned."

U.S. Circuit Judge Andrew Brasher, a Donald Trump appointee, joined Pryor and Abudu on the panel.

Source: Courthouse News Service