It’s not hard to see why “Micro Nine” pistols of the Hellcat genre are best-sellers today. Firstly, they’re chambered for 9mm Luger, almost universally recognized as a capable defense caliber with today’s best ammunition.
In addition, they are not only compact, but sometimes literally pocket-sized. Flat, to ride comfortably inside the waistband and conceal easily with maximum discretion. Carrying at least as many rounds as two of yesteryear’s standard, the “snub-nose .38.” And much faster to reload than those little revolvers.
Flat, pocket-sized and chambered in 9mm, the Hellcat typifies the micro nine that dominates today’s concealed carry market. The author shares the techniques that help him get the most out of small guns.
Nothing is perfect, and everything has “cons” to balance against the “pros.” The trick is to determine the balance of needs, that balance being achieved by going toward the strengths of the thing in question, and shoring up its weaknesses.
The biggest weakness of the small handgun is that it is generally perceived as more difficult to shoot. The smaller the pistol, the less flesh and bone of the shooter’s hand(s) can be wrapped around it to stabilize it on target through the shot, and then recover from recoil for the next shot.
Aiming
Historically, small carry guns came with terrible sights: tiny, almost vestigial, and hard to get on target with quickly. At one end of the spectrum were compact .32 ACP autopistols with no sights at all. For a very long time, popular snub-nose revolvers came with a front sight only one-tenth of an inch wide, and a correspondingly tiny rear notch to line it up with.
Small does not mean inaccurate: this pocket-sized Hellcat delivered solid hits at 25 yards. Modern micro-compacts are far more accurate than the tiny carry guns of decades past. Image: Gail Pepin
There are a few different ways to go with the aiming devices: iron sights, laser sights or carry optics. The latter offer precise aim and encourage focusing on the threat, but also increase the height of the pistol and can be more challenging in terms of concealability.
I associate with a lot of genuine gun experts, and don’t know a single one who carries an optic-sighted pistol in their pocket. This is not to say that you can’t effectively carry such a gun concealed; it simply means that pocket carry and to some degree ankle carry are contra-indicated.
The Hellcat Pro Comp offers shooters a integral compensator in a compact pistol that helps manage perceived recoil and give you increased control. Image: Gail Pepin
It is not a coincidence that the increase in carry optics and the increased popularity of appendix inside the waistband (AIWB) carry occurred at the same time. When the gun is made higher top-to-butt with an optical sight, the broad expanse of the abdomen is a logical place to carry it, since there is more fabric draping down from the wearer’s chest.
Laser sights are great in the dark, but of limited use in bright light.
With iron sights, the pistol-packer has much better choices today. Consider the sights which come standard on the Springfield Armory Hellcat: a big U-notch rear mated with a large, glowing bulb of a front sight. Fast to index on target, accurate, yet not likely to snag on the draw or compromise concealability.
Grasp
We cannot change the laws of physics. Smaller, lighter guns are going to recoil more than big, heavy ones when the shooting starts. The recoil takes two forms simultaneously: rearward “kick,” and muzzle rise.
The author demonstrates a one-handed grasp with his thumb curled down on this Springfield XD-S pistol. This helps provide the strongest single-hand grip. Image: Gail Pepin
A smaller gun has less flesh in contact with its grip-frame, and may feel as if it is twisting in the hand upon recoil. How do we mitigate this?
One mechanical answer is a compact recoil compensator, as found on the Springfield Hellcat Pro Comp. As the pistol fires, expanding gases jet upward through the port on top at the muzzle, “compensating” for the recoil by pushing the muzzle in a downward direction. Caution: with the pistol high and tight toward the body when firing from retention position, this can direct those hot gases upward toward the shooter’s own face and eyes.
With compensator or not, you can mitigate both “kick” and muzzle rise with technique.
The author demonstrates a two-handed crush grip on a Springfield XD-S. The support-hand thumb crosses over the firing-hand thumb, thumbprint over thumbnail, and both bear down hard. Image: Gail Pepin
First, grip the pistol very firmly with both firing hand and support hand. The harder you hold it, the less it moves in your hand. In my shooting classes (http://massadayoobgroup.com) I encourage a crush grip, meaning maximum hand strength exerted.
In the after-class critique, one question asked is what techniques did the student find most useful. The single technique most often named is the crush grip. Many say it reduced the recoil This is not actually possible; what they are experiencing is that it reduced the movement of the pistol in their hand(s).
Combine that with upper body weight aggressively forward and “into the gun.” This helps to quickly snap the muzzle down from its recoil arc and back on target.
Although a hold with the thumbs straight forward works well with larger pistols, many shooters find that curling the thumbs down, particularly the thumb of their firing hand, improves their control. The reason is that the human hand’s opposing thumb, when clenched, tightens the grip of the whole hand. To see how that works, wherever you are reading this take your empty gun hand and, with the thumb up, tighten your fingers into a fist. Mentally measure your maximum strength.
Now, still crushing and still measuring, slowly close the thumb, bending it at the median joint and pointing the tip of the thumb straight down. You’ll feel it distinctly increase your hand strength over what it was before with your thumb up or in a neutral position.
The author’s aggressive forward posture affords greater recoil control during rapid fire. Image: Gail Pepin
That added strength is particularly advantageous with a smaller/harder-kicking handgun. For a two-hand hold, simply put the support hand’s thumb over that of the firing hand and crush down similarly, thumbprint over thumbnail.
Three fingers away from that thumb is the “pinkie finger,” and its role in controlling a small pistol is greater than with a full-size service handgun. Now, you can always get an extended magazine with a sleeve that gives you the equivalent of a longer grip-frame, but that makes concealment more difficult. Many users will carry with the short mag and simply switch to the long mag at the end of the day when the concealment gun becomes the bedside gun.
The Short Grip and the Little Finger
With a full-size handgun, all fingers except the trigger finger are wrapped around the pistol’s grip. With a sub-compact, there probably won’t be room for the “pinkie” on the gun. Don’t just leave it floating. I’ve found that if you tuck that little finger tightly under the gun butt, it helps the other fingers to grip with maximum strength.
When a short grip leaves no room for the little finger, the author tucks it tightly under the magazine base. Image: Gail Pepin
Remember, our fingers are sympathetic: they all want to squeeze together. It’s bad enough that we have to disarticulate the trigger finger to make it work separately; don’t increase the difficulty by relaxing that smallest finger.
With a short-butt sub-compact, that little finger can get in the way of a reload. It can cause at least three problems. (1) It can get in the way of the ejection of the empty magazine. (2) It can block the insertion of the fresh magazine, usually by catching on the front edge of the magazine’s floorplate. In the middle of a shootout, that could get a Good Guy or Gal killed. (3) Even if it’s only a match or a practice session, the trapped finger can be cut or subjected to a painful blood blister.
Solution: extend the little finger during the reload, the way you’d imagine someone holding their cup while having tea with a queen. It may look effete, but your pinky finger will thank you.
With good techniques excellent groups can be achieved with a compact pistol like this LTT custom Hellcat Pro 9mm. This group was shot at 25 yards with Federal 147-grain HST ammunition. Image: Gail Pepin
Another problem with the little finger and a short butt comes when you brace on a hard surface like a range table or auto hood. If the little finger is between the gun butt and the hard surface when the shot goes off, even with a 9mm it can feel like someone took a hammer and whacked your finger with it. How do I know this? Sigh…trust me. I know this.
Trigger Time
If your carry gun is a micro, don’t do all your training and competition with your larger pistol just because they’re easier to shoot well. Devote the time to the gun you’re most likely to be using to protect yourself and your loved ones.
These little guns can be surprisingly accurate. I hope the above tips help you to find your best potential with yours.
These three guns fundamentally changed the
landscape of American gun culture.
Every generation has its own seminal moment. You never forget where you were when you heard the news. In my grandparents’ case that was the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. For folks my age it was 9/11. American adults alive in 1963 found their seminal moment in the brutal assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
There are several reasons for this. Thankfully, American Presidential assassinations are fairly rare. There have only been four — Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and Kennedy. In JFK’s case, the whole sordid thing was also filmed in gory detail. The man got his brains blown out in public whilst sitting alongside his pretty young wife. This, plus the fact even today, nobody seems to be completely satisfied with the government’s version of who did it.
Three men ultimately perished. JFK was obviously the target. His presumed killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, shot and killed a Dallas patrolman named JD Tippit 45 minutes later while on the run. Oswald was subsequently gunned down by a local mobster named Jack Ruby. Bob Johnson’s iconic photograph of a grimacing Oswald just as Ruby touched off his modified Colt Cobra won the Pulitzer Prize.
These three killings involved three different firearms. Each had a quirky story. Here are the details.
For a few days at least, Lee Harvey Oswald was the most hated man in America. Photo: U.S. Government
The Shooter
Lee Harvey Oswald was a weird guy. He burned through 22 addresses and a dozen schools before he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps at age 17. While serving as a Marine, he accidentally shot himself in the elbow with a contraband .22-caliber handgun and was disciplined for firing his M1 rifle into the Philippine jungle while on guard duty.
In 1959 after his discharge, Oswald traveled to the Soviet Union and attempted to secure Soviet citizenship. When the skeptical Russians refused, Oswald slit his wrists. He survived and went on to marry a Russian woman named Marina Prusakova. Three years later, a disillusioned Oswald returned to the States with his bride.
The Carcano 91/30 purportedly used by Oswald to kill JFK
was actually a pretty craptastic rifle. Photo: U.S. Government
The Rifle
We have Lee Harvey Oswald to thank for the 1968 Gun Control Act. The 68 GCA transformed gun ownership in America. Prior to that law, firearms could be freely bought and sold through the mail and need not even bear a serial number.
It was the GCA that established our familiar system of Federal Firearms Licensees. Oswald bought the assassination rifle under the alias “A. J. Hidell” via an ad in the back of the American Rifleman magazine. He had the weapon shipped to a P.O. box.
The advertisement actually listed the gun as a “6.5 Italian Carbine.” The illustrated weapon was a bolt-action Carcano Model 91 TS. However, Klein’s Sporting Goods had been unable to source this specific model. They replaced it with the very similar Model 91/38. Oswald’s 91/38 has a slightly longer barrel and left-sided sling mounts. Those of the TS are usually, but not always, mounted on the bottom. The two guns were otherwise nearly indistinguishable in dim light.
Oswald gave $19.95 for his Italian surplus 91/38 complete with a civilian optic mounted by the distributor. This would be about $195 today. The same rifle without the scope was $12.78. He paid $1.50 in shipping.
Oswald’s 91/38 Carcano was originally built in 1940 in Terni, Italy. It fired a Winchester Western 160-grain 6.5x52mm round-nosed cartridge and fed from a six-round en bloc clip. The 4X sight was produced by a company called Ordnance Optics. The serial number of the gun was C2766.
Roughly two weeks after taking possession of the weapon, Lee Harvey Oswald used it to try to kill white supremacist U.S. Army General Edwin Walker. Oswald attempted to shoot the segregationist military officer in his home, but the WWI-vintage round-nosed bullet deflected off of a window frame.
If the government report is to be believed, Oswald subsequently set up in the Texas Book Depository on November 22, 1963, and fired a total of three rounds as JFK’s vehicle passed by. Three empty cases were later found with the abandoned rifle. The average range was about 265 feet. One round passed through the president’s neck and was potentially survivable. Another took much of his head off. The third was never definitively accounted for.
In the hands of a skilled marksman, Oswald’s 91/38 rifle was fully capable of the kind of performance demanded of it that horrible day. However, subsequent firing trials with the actual weapon showed its zero to be 2.5″ high and 1″ right when fired from a rest at 15 meters. Most bystanders reported hearing either three or four shots.
Dabbs found this cool aluminum hammer shroud online (left). Mounting it up required drilling and tapping the frame, but he did so by hand with a cheap drill press.
Dabbs found this cool aluminum hammer shroud online.
The Escape
Lee Harvey Oswald fled the scene and was later confronted by Officer Tippit who was acting on a physical description of the JFK shooter. JD was Tippit’s actual first name. The letters didn’t stand for anything. Tippit had earned the Bronze Star for Valor while serving as a paratrooper in Europe during World War II and had three kids.
Oswald was carrying a snub-nosed Smith and Wesson .38 Victory Model he had also purchased under an alias through the mail. Without warning, he shot the cop in the chest, belly and head. Tippit was declared dead 10 minutes later in a nearby hospital. Oswald was apprehended in short order. It was not until later that he was officially tied to the JFK shooting.
Lee Harvey Oswald’s handgun was presumably a British Lend-Lease S&W Victory Model in .38/200 rechambered to .38 Special with a cut-down barrel. These modifications made it difficult to get a ballistic match on the rounds that killed Officer JD Tippit.
Comparison (L-R) — The 5.56x45mm, the Italian 6.5x52mm
and the 7.62x51mm. The round-nosed 160-grain WWI-vintage
6.5x52mm bullets were undeniably horrific downrange.
Vengeance
Oswald vigorously denied any involvement in the killings of either JD Tippit or the President. However, his palm print was found underneath the furniture on the Carcano, and the eyewitnesses tying him to the Tippit shooting were compelling. Two days after the murders, Oswald was being transferred from the Dallas Police headquarters to the County jail under heavy police escort.
Local nightclub owner and mobster Jack Ruby was a frequent visitor to police HQ. His presence aroused little suspicion. It has actually been postulated that Ruby might have been welcome for having habitually supplied loose women to some of the cops.
Without warning, Ruby lunged forward, shoved his Colt Cobra .38-caliber pocket revolver into Oswald’s belly and fired. That single round perforated Oswald’s stomach, spleen, aorta, inferior vena cava, kidney, liver and diaphragm. It ultimately stopped on the far side against his 11th rib. Oswald bled out in short order.
Ruby paid $62.50 for the Colt Cobra on January 19th, 1960 at Ray’s Sporting Goods in Dallas. A cop buddy named Joe Cody had recommended he get the gun given the large amounts of cash he handled in the course of running his strip joint, the Carousel Club.
Cody actually bought the gun for his mobster buddy as a straw purchaser because cops did not have to pay tax on firearms purchases. Cody and Ruby subsequently exchanged both the money and the gun outside the shop. Having the cop buy the piece saved Ruby $18.
Ruby was immediately arrested. He claimed he spontaneously shot Oswald to “save Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial.” Ruby subsequently developed disseminated cancer while in prison and died in 1967 at age 55. His actions and subsequent death have provided fodder for countless conspiracy theories.
Ruby’s snub-nosed Cobra was stock save for its curious aluminum hammer shroud. The shroud still allowed the hammer to be manually cocked but did make the gun much less likely to snag on loose clothing. There followed a 24-year legal fight over ownership of the weapon. In 1991 the gun was sold at auction for $220,000. The new owner sold fired bullets out of it for $1,000 apiece to fund his favorite charities. The pistol was confiscated by Capitol Hill police after being carried in D.C. illegally but was finally returned after yet another long legal battle. The owner subsequently sold it yet again, but I was unable to locate a reliable price.
The moment Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald was captured by photographer Bob Johnson. The image earned him a Pulitzer Prize.Photo: Public Domain
Ruminations
A local clothier named Abraham Zapruder captured everything on his home movie camera, establishing the specific timeline of the shooting. His is the most scrutinized motion picture in human history.
In 1999, the U.S. government paid Zapruder’s heirs $16 million to incorporate the footage into the National Archives. That works out to $615,384 per second. In all of American history, little has been more controversial than the JFK assassination.
Conspiracy theorists question absolutely everything and become angry just talking about it even today. What is not in dispute, however, is that these three guns did fundamentally change the American political landscape.
A New York City man who walked cross-country from the Big Apple to California over five months had his belongings stolen after stepping foot in the Golden State. Bronx resident Chantz Rivera started his lengthy trek on May 31, walking continuously for 149 days while dragging all of his belongings in a shopping cart before reaching the West Coast.
After getting to San Francisco on Oct. 26, he went to a McDonald’s near Fillmore Street and Golden Gate Avenue – only to have a bag with his portable charger and USB flash drives swiped. Rivera said that he initially didn’t mind because he was tired and sick.
“I’m like, ‘Oh, somebody took something? I don’t care. It ain’t worth nothing. I’m already here [in California],” he told the San Francisco Standard. But then he realized his memory cards and flash drive contained videos and pictures from his journey. Which really sucks big time in my book! Grumpy
Ask you guys to send in funny gun-related stuff, and you don’t send squat. Run just one teeny little article about an attack by an assault monkey, and you menagerie-minded maniacs go into overdrive.
Apparently, some significant percentage of our readers are fish-and-fur-fight fanatics. I guess there ain’t no accounting for taste. So here’s a sampling of the weird critter tales you’ve sent me:
Coon Toss
You didn’t catch this one on CNN, but it was a headline in the Syracuse, N.Y., Herald Journal: “Woman Hurls Dead Raccoon At Lawyer.”
The lady was arrested following a scuffle with her neighbor, an attorney, after he allegedly knocked her down onto a road-killed raccoon. The story said she then grabbed the recumbent raccoon and hurled it with malicious intent.
The outcome of this case is unknown — perhaps a reader in Syracuse can help us out — but it should be noted that American Handgunner wants to go on record deploring the secondary use of brainwave-challenged victims of highway violence as missiles, even when thrown at lawyers.
In our view, not only is this an inexcusable exploitation of ravaged raccoons, but a fundamental violation of a long-standing American cultural value. Rotting fruit!, we say, over-aged eggs!, we implore you, but in the name of all that’s decent, leave our honored road-killed ’coons out of the messy business of barrister-bashing.
Haven’t they — the raccoons — suffered enough already?
Don’t Move! I’ll Fowl Ya
So, if you had a gun that could fire poultry at high velocity, what could you hunt with it? Aircraft, apparently, but without too much success. According to Business Week magazine, a testing laboratory used a “gun-like device” to blast fowl at a new type of aircraft windshield.
“To measure resistance against flying objects, engineers recently fired chicken carcasses at 300 mph at the windshield of the new Saab-Fairchild turboprop airplane.” The windshield held, but according to a spokesman, “Mud, blood, and feathers were everywhere.”
American Handgunner isn’t impressed. If they could develop a revolver capable of shooting frozen squirrels at 900 fps, now there, you’d have something!
No Kidding, Really
Now visualize a young man the medical journal called Dexter relaxing on the couch in his apartment watching TV. Very much like any other working stiff on the weekend, he’s just kicking back and enjoying the company of his pet rattlesnake, snoozing on his belly.
That is, the snake is resting on his belly on Dexter’s belly. Dexter later reports he suddenly sneezed, which startled the snake, causing it to bite Dexter on the lip.
The rattler — we’ll call him Ralph — is a fully-fanged, standard-issue unmodified venomous pit viper. Pause here to note that “experts in this area” remain unnamed. What area? Pit viper lip-bites?
Anyway, the experts do not believe Dexter’s story. Instead they think he is one of a select few nutcases who are fascinated, even sexually aroused, by close observation of the flicking action of snake tongues.
Caught up in their obsession, they sometimes actually try to kiss the snake. On the tongue. as circumstantial evidence, they cite the fact that Dexter was previously bitten under similar circumstances by a former pet, in that cased a venomous Habu snake, native to Okinawa.
So Dexter is bitten on the lip, causing him some degree of discomfort and involuntary animation, a condition possibly exacerbated by sudden onset of a neurosis we’ll call “fear of pending death.”
Now the real tomfoolery begins. Dexter’s roommate offers to help, explaining he heard somewhere that rattlesnake venom can be neutralized by running electrical current through the bite site.
The two rocket scientists adjourn to the apartment parking lot, where roomie hooks up jumper cables to Dexter’s lip, connects them to the battery of his car, jumps in and fires ’er up!
Concerned neighbors observe this unorthodox holistic treatment and summon paramedics.
When parameds arrive, they find roomie sitting in his ride revvin’ the engine and suckin’ down a cold one. They inquire as to how long Dexter’s been unconscious on the pavement, connected by 18-gauge rubber-shrouded twin-cabled lip-umbilicus, just twitchin’ and smokin’. Roomie answers that he ain’t sure, because the hood was up and he couldn’t see too good.
Dexter lived, and as far as we know didn’t even kill his roomie after being released from the hospital. Dexter lost a considerable portion of lip due to the effect of venom and electrical burns. He might also have lost some brain cells. Maybe. Who could tell?
Concealed Turkey
Two Haitians have been arrested and charged with stuffing handguns into frozen poultry and smuggling them to members of the Haitian secret police.
Patrick Louiseau and Florence Toussaint pleaded guilty to federal firearms charges after it was discovered they were buying .380 pistols, stuffing them into defrosted turkeys, refreezing the gobblers, and carrying them as luggage on trips to Haiti.
They could have stuffed a bazooka into a pig, but it wouldn’t fit under an airline seat.
Mark Moritz hung up his satirical spurs last issue to a collective sigh of relief from America’s gunwriters whom he had lampooned in “Friendly Fire” for two long, painful years. The 10 Ring is written by Commander Gilmore, a retired San Diego police officer who bases his humor, like Mark did, on actual occurrences. All the incidents described by the Commander are true.
Government records describe Gregory Pruess as a paid ATF informant in Patrick Tate Adamiak’s prosecution. Pruess denies assisting the bureau. The classification of cut receivers, similar to this PPS-43 kit, was a central dispute in ATF’s prosecution of Patrick Tate Adamiak. IMG Duncan Johnson
ATF’s reliance on confidential informants, including convicted felons facing fresh criminal charges, raises a recurring question: What happens when the government builds a firearms case around someone with powerful incentives to deliver results? Federal reviews have documented failures in the bureau’s disclosure and oversight of informants. Patrick Tate Adamiak’s prosecution brings those concerns into focus again.
At Ruby Ridge, a Justice Department review identified failures to disclose an ATF informant’s full compensation arrangement. At Waco, ATF’s own chronology describes a confidential source tipping a reporter about the impending operation before the bureau changed the raid date. In 2017, the Justice Department’s inspector general concluded that ATF’s confidential-informant oversight “required significant improvement,” identifying weaknesses in recordkeeping, payment tracking, and review of higher-risk sources.
In Adamiak’s case, the government relied on Gregory Pruess, a repeatedly convicted felon. According to the government’s appellate brief filed in July, 2024, ATF found Pruess unlawfully possessing two pistols and a rifle, secured his cooperation to avoid criminal charges, and paid him about $8,000. An earlier ATF affidavit from April, 2022, however, said no promises or guarantees were made.
Adamiak says Pruess delivered parts to his home, then introduced him by email to a man using the name Rick Hayes. The government says Hayes was Pruess himself, operating under an identity created at an ATF agent’s direction. Adamiak spent nearly four years in federal custody before President Donald Trump pardoned him in September 2026. His case raises the same accountability questions that have followed ATF’s informant practices for decades: how was the source vetted and supervised, what incentives shaped his conduct, and what was disclosed to the defense?
Gregory Pruess’s Criminal Record and Documented ATF Cooperation
ATF informant Gregory Pruess had a criminal record and powerful incentives to deliver results—raising serious questions about his reliability.
The last conviction on Pruess’s record before the Adamiak case is United States v. Pruess, 703 F.3d 242 (4th Cir. 2012). He pleaded guilty to possessing ammunition as a convicted felon, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), and reserved the right to argue that the ban could not be applied to him because he was, he said, nonviolent. Judge Diana Gribbon Motz rejected that claim and affirmed on December 31, 2012. The district court had sentenced him to 21 months and a $550 fine.
Reading the 2012 opinion provides the history behind that plea. Pruess was a licensed firearms dealer and collector of weapons and military memorabilia, and he owned and operated a military museum. His first experience with law enforcement came in 1994, after an undercover operation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, the government charged him with twelve firearms offenses tied to his possession and transfer of three grenades and a mortar round, all with obliterated identification and lot numbers. He pleaded guilty to one felony count. The court sentenced him to twelve months.
Soon after his release, he went back to arms dealing as a felon. The Fourth Circuit wrote that he sold UZI submachine-gun barrels, M-16 components, M-122 remote firing devices, AK-47 machine guns, grenades, and other weapons, including stolen weapons, to undercover agents and a cooperating witness. On one sale, he brought extra guns and told the agents the guns were for protection, or in case anything went wrong with the deal. Authorities arrested him and charged him with twenty-five firearms violations. This was tied to a ring stealing weapons from Camp Lejeune. He pleaded guilty to eighteen counts. The court sentenced him to 108 months and 60 months, to run concurrently. In 1999, shortly before that sentencing, he ordered a pistol online using an altered firearms license. He pleaded guilty to an additional count. The court added eight months.
After he got out, he tried to buy belted ammunition, grenades, and parachute flares from a confidential informant, knowing they were likely stolen. Agents arrested him after he paid for the ammunition. That purchase is the 922(g) conviction the Fourth Circuit affirmed in 2012.
His 2009 judgment barred him from any business or hobby involving firearms or ammunition and from acting as an informant without the court’s permission. Those restrictions likely ended when supervised release ended around 2013, though public dockets could not confirm that date. Even so, the government’s brief in the Adamiak appeal describes Pruess as running a gun store around 2020 and 2021.
Parts Delivery and the Rick Hayes Introduction
The government’s brief and Adamiak do agree on how he met Gregory Pruess. Around November 2020, Adamiak started buying firearm parts from Pruess, who operated a gun store in North Carolina. Adamiak says those were USGI parts, and that the tab ran $60,000 to $70,000: hammers, springs, barrels, heat shields, and pins for AR-15s, M240s, M2HBs, and MK46s, plus a tripod.
Adamiak says Pruess delivered the parts to his house. That, he says, is when Pruess saw the parts kits.
According to Adamiak, it was after that meeting that Pruess introduced him through email to a man called Rick Hayes. Pruess said he had met Hayes at the Knob Creek, the Kentucky machine-gun shoot, and that Hayes wanted Adamiak’s extra parts kits for movie productions. Adamiak sold him kits. Hayes wanted more. Adamiak says he pointed Hayes to online listings because he didn’t have any extra kits. Hayes said he did not know how to use GunBroker and asked Adamiak to “bird-dog” the kits for him. Adamiak was already buying an M79 from a licensed dealer on GunBroker. That dealer had PPSh-41 kits and offered a deal on the kits and the M79 together. Adamiak says those are the kits that went to Rick Hayes.
Gunbroker exhibit PPSH41
According to the government’s later brief, between July 2021, when Adamiak met Pruess at his home, and October, 2021, ATF found that Pruess unlawfully possessed two pistols and a rifle. The government’s Adamiak brief says he agreed to cooperate to avoid criminal charges and was paid about $8,000. No federal charge from that search appears on the public record. The ATF affidavit filed in 2022 states that no promises or guarantees were made to Pruess regarding his cooperation in Adamiak’s case. The government’s own documents do not agree with each other.
That contradiction is not a paperwork quibble. Confidential informant cases turn on what the source was promised, what he was paid, and what he still had to lose. A jury that hears “no promises were made” hears a different case than a jury that hears the source was cooperating to stay out of prison and was paid thousands of dollars to deliver.
Affidavit Of ATF Special Agent William Hairston Jr., April 2022Screenshot of government’s brief in Adamiak case. Filed in 2024
Who Was “Rick Hayes”?
The government’s brief and ATF Special Agent William Hairston Jr.’s affidavit tell the Hayes introduction differently.
According to the ATF agent’s affidavit, in October 2021, Pruess told ATF Special Agent William Hairston Jr. that Adamiak was trafficking machine guns on the internet and that Pruess had seen what he thought were destructive devices in Adamiak’s house. Hairston directed Pruess to open an email account under the name Rick Hayes so he could deal with Adamiak without revealing his identity. As Hayes, Pruess asked about “any kind of saw-cut machine guns that were easily put back together.”
“Direct Examination of C.I. Gregory Pruess on October 19, 2022.” Appendix O of Adamiak’s Supreme Court petition in No. 25-1190, starting at page 176a.
In November 2021, ATF used him to buy a PPSh-41 receiver for $2,200. Controlled purchases continued into 2022. Agents then searched Adamiak’s properties.
On the government’s account, Rick Hayes was not a Knob Creek contact shopping for movie props. Rick Hayes was, in fact, Gregory Pruess.
“Agent Hairston directed Pruess to create an email account using a fake name, ‘Rick Hayes,’ to communicate with Adamiak without revealing Pruess’s identity.” As Hayes, Pruess asked about “any kind of saw-cut machine guns that were easily put back together.”
In November 2021, ATF used him to buy a PPSh-41 receiver for $2,200. The brief says the receiver had a single saw cut and could be put back together with minimal effort. A second November buy was five PPS-43 receivers for $7,050. Counts One and Two were the PPSh-41 sold to “Rick Hayes” in March 2022, the government brief stated.
Pruess Denies Helping ATF
Pruess, contacted by AmmoLand News, denied cooperating with the ATF even though his testimony under oath shows that he did, and the government called him a Confidential Informant.
“I don’t know what ATF did or didn’t do. I gave no assistance. That’s why I went to prison each time,” Pruess wrote in an email to AmmoLand.
Pruess said agents came after him on three occasions because he would not give in, that they offered him chances to “save myself,” and that he “did the honorable thing” by refusing. “They kept telling me if I don’t cooperate, I’ll regret it later, and they were correct on that.” He wrote that he never would cooperate with ATF “despite being beaten to death legally by them over the years.”
However, looking at the 2012 opinion and Pruess’ record, there is much that his email omits. Those documents describe a man who pleaded guilty in 1994, pleaded guilty to eighteen counts after going back to dealing, picked up eight more months for an altered dealer license, and then pleaded guilty again after paying for ammunition he believed was stolen. On top of all that, the Adamiak brief says ATF found two pistols and a rifle in Gregory Pruess’s house, asked him to cooperate to avoid charges, and paid him about $8,000.
Pruess’ denial stands in stark contrast to the government’s record of his legal issues and contact with the ATF.
Then, Pruess gave AmmoLand a third origin story. He wrote that people who turned out to be undercover asked him for parts kits, that he did not have any, and that he directed them to Adamiak’s GunBroker ads.
“Sure wish I never made that referral,” Pruess wrote to AmmoLand. “They asked me while they were undercover if I knew anybody else that had stuff, and I pointed to other people on GunBroker… that is how I got tangled up in this mess.”
A customer who spent $60,000 to $70,000 on USGI parts, a man introduced via email as a Knob Creek buyer, and a paid confidential source are three different facts. Adamiak describes the first two. The government’s brief describes the third. Pruess describes a referral he now regrets.
In the same email to AmmoLand, Pruess described himself as a witness. Pruess wrote that he was subpoenaed to testify, that he was told the government would handle any intimidation, and that further reporting could draw a criminal charge for “intimidation of a federal witness.” He also wrote that he would take legal action if he saw “any nonsense.” A request for comment is not witness intimidation.
If accurate, the subpoena claim is itself an admission that he was in the case as a witness. It does not sit easily next to “I gave no assistance.” AmmoLand News asked which proceeding he was subpoenaed for. Pruess did not reply.
Pruess also offered his account of the evidence presented in Adamiak’s case. He wrote that he used to be a destructive-device manufacturer and that the RPG-7 he was shown in the courtroom did not have the trigger-group parts destroyed or a hole cut through the bore the same size as the bore, “only a very small hole.” He wrote that the firing mechanism was not welded shut and that no crossbars were welded inside, “as was the regulation.”
On the receivers, Pruess wrote that Adamiak was selling improperly single-saw-cut receivers, cut once with a fine blade, and that “you could have glued it back together and it would function more than one shot at a time.” He wrote that he could “only figure” the parts came from Europe, because a receipt from another parts dealer “would have been the end of his case.” Those are his claims about what he was shown in court. They restate the government’s trial theory. They are not findings. Adamiak says the PPSh kits came from a licensed GunBroker dealer, in a package deal with an M79 he was already buying, and that he sold those kits to the man Pruess introduced as Rick Hayes.
Pruess made one allegation in the emails with AmmoLand that was initially nowhere to be found in the public appellate record. Pruess wrote that Adamiak “got so much time because of witness intimidation” before sentencing, and that Adamiak had not mentioned it. No sentencing memorandum or appellate filing reviewed for this story establishes intimidation by Adamiak. Until a docket entry says it, it is an allegation from the informant, not a fact about the sentence.
After further investigation, AmmoLand found the only allegation of witness intimidation in the case did not involve Adamiak. The government cited a video by Mr. Guns & Gear that named Pruess, but the judge rejected the motion because Pruess’s name was already in the public record.
Pruess Offers Saw-Cut Parts Kits for Sale
Pruess did not deny selling kits. He wrote that “all the few little parts kits that I have sold off, trying to raise money to survive, were legally imported by the thousands,” unlike what he says Adamiak sold. Gregory Pruess remains active on the Sturmgewehr forums, where he has posted since 2016, mostly under the name g36kinnc, including for-sale ads for submachine-gun parts kits.
Pruess’s post on https://www.sturmgewehr.com/
AmmoLand News contacted him under an alias and asked about kits. Pruess offered to sell a British Sterling kit for $850 and an Italian Franchi 9mm submachine-gun kit for $900. Both were described as saw-cut. A saw cut does not, by itself, make a kit illegal. Legality turns on when the cut was made, how it was made, and whether the parts can be readily restored under the National Firearms Act (NFA). The government’s brief says Pruess asked Adamiak to supply the same class of parts while working for ATF. Pruess closed that part of the email by blaming Congress, not the seller: “None of that stuff should be illegal. Saw cut or not.”
Pruess offered to sell this saw-cut firearm to AmmoLand through email. Pruess selling on https://www.sturmgewehr.com/Offered to sell to AmmoLand though email. Pruess selling on https://www.sturmgewehr.com/
Pruess also blamed Adamiak’s freedom on publicity. “He has just gotten extremely lucky. Social media lobbied enough to believe what he was saying and got him a pardon,” he wrote. “Now it looks like he’s screwing it up fast and hard sadly.” He wrote that he was glad Adamiak “survived it with a good outcome,” and added that his own case had no GoFundMe and no pardon.
Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Documented ATF Informant Failures
Confidential informants have figured in the record of several of ATF’s most controversial operations, from Ruby Ridge and Waco to the case of Patrick Tate Adamiak. Their roles differed, and their presence alone does not prove they caused the failures that followed. But these cases raise a recurring question: when the government relies on a source with a criminal record, personal incentives, or influence over a target, what safeguards ensure that source is reliable—and not driving the investigation?
At Ruby Ridge, a Justice Department review flagged the failure to disclose all aspects of an ATF informant’s compensation arrangement during the prosecution. At Waco, a confidential source tipped a reporter that “something big” might happen at the Branch Davidian compound; ATF’s chronology says the bureau then moved its planned raid from Monday to Sunday. Years later, the Justice Department’s inspector general concluded that ATF’s oversight of its confidential-informant program “required significant improvement,” citing weaknesses in recordkeeping, payment tracking, and review of higher-risk informants.
The government’s theory and Adamiak’s are not reconcilable, and a jury accepted the government’s. What is reconcilable, because it is in the government’s own papers, is the informant’s motive as the brief describes it. He had unlawful guns in his house. He was asked to cooperate to avoid charges. He was paid about $8,000. His email denies that account and, in the same message, warns a reporter off as a federal witness. Adamiak says the man who delivered $8,000 to $10,000 in USGI parts to his house is the same man who, a month later, introduced Rick Hayes. The brief says Rick Hayes was the deliveryman. Those two sentences cannot both be the whole story. The Fourth Circuit had already written the earlier half of Pruess’s record in 2012.
For many Americans who distrust the ATF, cases like Ruby Ridge and Adamiak’s reinforce a longstanding concern: informants with criminal records and personal incentives can become powerful forces in investigations, while the public may never see the full terms of their cooperation. Adamiak’s pardon ended his prison sentence; it did not resolve the conflict between the government’s account that Pruess cooperated to avoid charges and received about $8,000 and the ATF affidavit stating that no promises were made. Until that contradiction—and what the defense was told about Pruess’s role—is explained, the central question remains: what safeguards keep an informant from shaping the case the government brings?
AmmoLand News contacted ATF’s media office for comment, but received no response before publication. This article will be updated if ATF responds.
Mr. Crump is an NRA instructor and constitutional activist with more than 26 years of experience in networking and cybersecurity for major Fortune 100 companies. John has written about firearms, the Constitution, and cybersecurity, and has interviewed people from all walks of life. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons. Follow him on X at @right2bear, or at www.crumpy.com.
For a few days at least, Lee Harvey Oswald was the most hated man in America. Photo: U.S. Government
Lee Harvey Oswald’s handgun was presumably a British Lend-Lease S&W Victory Model in .38/200 rechambered to .38 Special with a cut-down barrel. These modifications made it difficult to get a ballistic match on the rounds that killed Officer JD Tippit.
Comparison (L-R) — The 5.56x45mm, the Italian 6.5x52mm
Ask you guys to send in funny gun-related stuff, and you don’t send squat. Run just one teeny little article about an attack by an assault monkey, and you menagerie-minded maniacs go into overdrive.
