TEXARKANA, Texas — A Texarkana man has been sentenced to 57 months in federal prison for a firearms violation in the Eastern District of Texas.
Jakeem Butler, 25, pleaded guilty Monday to unlawful possession of a machine gun and was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Robert W. Schroeder III, U.S. Attorney Jay R. Combs announced in a news release.
Butler was stopped for a traffic violation in Texarkana on Dec. 31, 2024, according to the news release. During the stop, officers detected the odor of marijuana, leading to a search of the vehicle.
During the search, officers located a firearm equipped with an illegal machine gun conversion device commonly referred to as a Glock-switch. Machine gun conversion devices are small mechanisms that can be attached to the rear of the slide of a firearm, converting a semi-automatic weapon into a fully automatic machine gun. Federal law defines a machine gun as a weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.
The Texarkana, Texas, Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives investigated the case, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Lauren Richards prosecuted it.
