David Olofson is a U.S. Army veteran who was tried and convicted by the U.S. Federal government on the charge of "transferring a machine gun" after he lent his 20-year old AR-15 rifle to a friend, Robert Kiernicki, and it malfunctioned on a shooting range, emitting multiple rounds and immediately jamming three times in a row, which aroused suspicion that the rifle was in fact an automatic weapon.

Kiernicki testified that Olofson had told Kiernicki that the third position of the rifle's firing selector was for automatic firing, but it jammed, court records indicate. He also testified Olofson told him he had fired the weapon on the automatic setting at that same range without a problem. According to Len Savage, a weaponry expert who runs Historic Arms LLC, BATFE paid Kiernicki an undisclosed amount of money for his testimony