Orange Park man, YouTube celeb get prison for 'reckless' machine gun conversion device sales

Source: Florida Times-Union

Orange Park man, YouTube celeb get prison for 'reckless' machine gun conversion device sales

Steve Patterson, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union
Updated Fri, September 8, 2023 at 12:15 PM EDT·3 min read

An Orange Park business owner who sold thousands of illegal devices for converting semiautomatic rifles into machine guns will serve a 68-month prison sentence, a federal judge has decided.

A YouTube figure who promoted Kristopher “Justin” Ervin’s Auto Key Card to an audience of about 180,000 subscribers to his gun-themed social media channel will serve five years, U.S. District Judge Marcia Morales Howard said in a sentencing that described the two men’s actions as “unlawful, dangerous [and] reckless.”

But the judge said the sentences were significantly less than federal guidelines prescribe and that attorneys for both the prosecution and defense could end up challenging her decision.

“I suspect that everyone will appeal and no one is satisfied with what I’ve done today,” she said Thursday.

The sentence was distinctive because of the vast number of conversion devices — about 6,600, prosecutors said — that Ervin sold through more than 1,500 orders, placed largely after Ervin advertised his product on Wisconsin gun dealer Matthew Hoover’s YouTube channel, CRS Firearms.

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Read more: https://news.yahoo.com/orange-park-man-youtube-celeb-234345265.html