A Louisiana commercial fisherman was sentenced last week to a year and a day in federal prison after being caught at sea with a cache of machine guns that he claimed he used to shoot sharks when they attacked his nets.

Cuong Quoc Tran, 39, who is described in court records as a career fisherman, admitted to possessing seven M-16 or AR-15 type rifles that he’d converted to automatic fire. Tran pleaded guilty in March to a single federal count of machine gun possession.

He was the captain of the Lucky Jean, a commercial boat stopped at sea on Jan. 5, 2022 by the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Tiger Shark, about four miles south of Southwest Pass.

During a “safety search,” Coast Guard inspectors found several rifles that were “modified by the replacement of the slide cover plate with a polymer ma

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