An engineering student at UCF was arrested after police discovered he was keeping a fully-automatic AR-15 in his car at an on-campus dorm, authorities said.
UCF police began investigating Max Bennett Chambers, 19, after receiving a tip that he possessed drop-in auto sears, which can be used to convert a semiautomatic rifle into an automatic weapon.
According to an affidavit, Chambers allowed police to search his vehicle at the Towers at Knights Plaza, a complex of apartment-style dorm towers on the main campus. The AR-15 was found inside the vehicle and Chambers admitted to owning it, police said.
An FDLE firearm instructor test-fired the weapon and confirmed it was fully automatic, the affidavit said. The gun was found with a brand-new magazine with six rounds, but was able to fire at least 19 rounds consecutively with a single trigger pull, police said.
“The test fire confirmed the AR-15 is a machine gun,” the affidavit said.
According to police, Chambers confessed to manufacturing three of the devices in December and testing one on the AR-15 earlier this month. He said he knew using the device was illegal, “but said he does not like laws,” according to the arrest affidavit.
“He knowingly and flagrantly disregarded the law and that’s unacceptable to us,” UCF police Chief Carl Metzger told reporters. “I don’t think anyone would consider it a good idea to have a machine gun on a college campus. This isn’t Afghanistan.”
Florida’s recently-enacted ban on so-called bump-fire stocks, which convert semiautomatic firearms to mimic fully-automatic weapons, prohibits the possession of any device which alters the firing rate of a gun to replicate automatic weapon fire.
Chambers faces charges of possession of a machine gun and a bump-fire stock. The sophomore mechanical engineering major has also been trespassed from campus, the Police Department said.
Metzger said Chambers, who lived in Tower 3, never made any threats to the university. He has been temporarily suspended pending student conduct proceedings, the police chief said.
“We believe he’s an enthusiast who put his interest in firearms above complying with the law,” Metzger said.
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UCF policy prohibits weapons from being possessed or stored on university property, but allows for them to be kept in a private vehicle as long as they are “not readily accessible for immediate use.”
UCFPD previously had contact with Chambers in spring 2018. According to police, Chambers had a part of a firearm in his dorm, which wasn’t illegal but was against campus rules. Officers explained the policy violation to Chambers at the time, officials said.
Detectives are still investigating, UCF police said in the statement, adding that the U.S. Attorney’s Office has also been notified that federal laws may have been violated.
Chambers was booked into the Orange County Jail about 4:15 p.m. Tuesday and has since bonded out, records show. During his first appearance before a judge, he testified that he is a full-time student and does not have a job. He was released Wednesday afternoon.
A woman listed in the affidavit as Chambers’ next-of-kin declined to comment when reached by phone.
The Towers at Knights Plaza complex, located on the northeast corner of campus near many of UCF’s athletic facilities, was the scene of a mass-shooter scare in March 2013. Read that story here.
Police said James Oliver Seevakumaran, a former student who was facing eviction, penned a “manifesto” documenting his plans to massacre fellow residents of Tower 1 with guns and explosives after flushing them out of their rooms by pulling a fire alarm.
He pulled the alarm just after midnight March 18, 2013, and pointed a rifle at a roommate, who retreated into a bedroom and called 911. Seevakumaran killed himself soon after. In his dorm, police found explosives, a semiautomatic rifle and 1,000 rounds.
jeweiner@orlandosentinel.com, 407-420-5171 or @JeffWeinerOS on Twitter
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