3-Year Term Under Assault Rifle Law

A street gang member who was the first defendant to be convicted by a jury under the city’s new assault rifle law has been sentenced to three years in jail for possessing two AK-47 assault rifles and related charges.

Bat Joe Ung, 19, of Los Angeles, was convicted by a Municipal Court jury last Friday of two counts of possessing an assault rifle and one count each of resisting arrest and carrying a concealed weapon, a 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, said Mike Qualls, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office.

Ung, whose nickname is “Ninja,” on Wednesday received one year in jail for possessing the two Chinese-made rifles and an additional year for each of the other two charges.

Ung’s case was the second filed by City Atty. James Hahn under the new city weapons law. In the first, Carlton Diggs, 20, of Rancho Cucamonga, pleaded no contest and was sentenced last month by a judge to six months in jail on charges stemming from his possession of a military-style M-1 carbine.