Waynesville Man Sentenced for Illegal Machine Gun Possession

Asheville -- July 6, 2023: The U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina, Dena J. King,  announced on June 15, 2023,  Jacob Ryan McClure, 25, of Waynesville, N.C., was given 33 months in jail and three years of supervised release for having machine guns.

The Haywood County Sheriff's Office McClure's on July 6, 2022, according to court records and the sentencing,  during a traffic stop, police found 97 illegal conversion devices in McClure's vehicle. These devices called "Glock switches," are used to convert firearms into machine guns. Four P80 handguns, which are privately made guns called "Ghost guns," had illegal Glock switches added to them to turn them into machine guns. This is against the law. Police also found a regular Glock gun with a Glock switch installed, a 9mm handgun with a short barrel that wasn't registered, 10 unregistered silencers, and $3,000 in cash.

According to court records, McClure was arrested in Tennessee in August 2021, before the incident in Haywood County. At the time, police found several guns in his car and rental cabin, including converted machineguns, an unregistered silencer, drugs, and more than $10,000 in cash. McClure was charged with a federal crime for this crime by the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Tennessee. Later, these charges were sent to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.

McClure pleaded guilty on March 3, 2023, to two counts of having machine guns in both of the federal cases. 

U.S. Attorney King thanked the ATF, the Haywood County Sheriff’s Office, and the Dover, Tennessee, Police Department for conducting investigations.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Asheville handled the prosecution. U.S. Attorney King also thanked the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee for their coordination and assistance.

WNCTimes