LEGEND IN THE MAKING: THE RAID THAT WASN'T

THE RAID THAT WASN'T

IT HAS BECOME THE QUICKEST WAY TO FAME IN AMERICA'S GUN culture. And one morning in May 1992 it happened to Louis Katona III, a Bucyrus, Ohio, real estate salesman and part-time police officer. He got to tell all about it when the National Rifle Association flew him to its annual meeting in Phoenix last spring--how agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the "jackbooted fascists" of N.R.A. lore, had raided his home and seized his machine-gun collection. At the time, he estimated the guns' value at about $300,000 and kept them locked inside a walk-in vault in his...

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