A 39-year-old Somerville man has pleaded guilty to federal firearms charges after investigators searched his Oak Street apartment and found more than 100 privately made firearms, several fully automatic machine guns, and homemade silencers assembled from solvent traps. Robert Butland, who is legally barred from owning guns or ammunition because of prior state convictions, admitted to possessing firearms and ammunition as a felon, closing out a case that began with an ATF search warrant a year ago.
According to MassLive, agents found the weapons hidden throughout Butland's apartment, including in a locked closet, a backpack and the drawers of a coffee table. The outlet reported the cache was uncovered alongside multiple 3D printers, tools and what investigators described as a firearm-manufacturing workbench, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office. Federal court documents show Butland has prior state convictions out of Lawrence District Court for resisting arrest, destruction of property, and assault and battery on a police officer, along with additional convictions for negligent operation of a motor vehicle, possession of a class B controlled substance, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon.
A Year-Long Buying Spree Before the Raid
Federal charging documents reported that Butland had been purchasing 3D printers, firearm components and accessories online from vendors around the country since 2022, well before the ATF executed its search warrant at his Somerville home last August, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. That timeline points to a deliberate, years-long effort to assemble untraceable weapons rather than a single impulsive purchase.
When agents finally searched the apartment, they didn't just find handguns. The Justice Department says they recovered fully automatic machine guns, silencers built from solvent traps, and live ammunition in several calibers, including 9mm Luger, 5.56 Hornady Frontier, and 7.62x39mm rounds — specifications that match both rifle and handgun platforms and underscore the scale of the stockpile.
Sentencing Exposure and What Comes Next
Butland was arrested on a criminal complaint in August 2025, indicted by a federal grand jury the following month, and has remained in federal custody continuously through his guilty plea this month, per the Justice Department's account. U.S. Senior District Court Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton has set sentencing for November 10.
Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), the felon-in-possession charge carries a maximum statutory penalty of up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000, the Justice Department noted. It remains an open question whether prosecutors will seek sentencing enhancements tied to the presence of machine guns and suppressors, or how the defense might address ownership of non-firearm component parts.
Part of a Broader Ghost Gun Crackdown
Butland's case lands amid a significant tightening of Massachusetts gun law. In July 2024, Governor Maura Healey signed “An Act Modernizing Firearms Laws,” known as Chapter 135, which specifically criminalized the possession, assembly and manufacture of untraceable ghost guns and unserialized 3D-printed firearms, according to Mass.gov.
State data help explain why. The Massachusetts State Police 2024 Crime Gun Report found that law enforcement agencies statewide seized 205 ghost guns or privately made firearms that year, accounting for 9% of all 2,389 crime guns recovered. An analysis of ATF tracing data by Everytown Research & Policy found the problem had already been accelerating fast: law enforcement recovered 813 ghost guns in Massachusetts between 2022 and 2023, a 188% jump over the total recovered in the preceding five years combined. Nationally, the ATF's National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment reported 54,722 ghost guns recovered in 2022 and 2023 combined, a 44% increase over the prior five years.
Butland's arrest also follows a pattern of similar federal cases across Greater Boston. In May, federal prosecutors indicted an East Boston man on machine gun charges after agents seized 3D printers, machine-gun conversion parts and 31 privately made firearm receivers from his apartment. While federal court documents in Butland's case center on his status as a prohibited possessor under his prior convictions, the scale of his manufacturing setup — multiple 3D printers, machine-gun components, silencer solvent traps and over 100 firearms — marks it as one of the largest single home ghost-gun seizures reported in the Greater Boston area in recent years.
