A California Superior Court judge arrested last week has now been charged with killing his wife in front of their adult son at their home. Court filings reveal the judge had over 47 weapons and 26,000 rounds of ammunition in his home.
Who cares he has 47 weapons. You only have 2 hands. What you think he is going to do? Strap 30 glocks to his leg?
Who cares he has 26000 rounds. Do you know how heavy ammo is? What you think is he going to do? Walk around with a shopping cart full of ammo? Strap 50 magazines to his chest?
It still amazes me that people fall for this "quantity " argument. It means nothing. Someone is not more dangerous with 500 rifles or 5 rifles.
Yeah I mean to be fair there are tons of gun enthusiasts that also have an insane number of guns and ammo (because they regularly go shooting at a range or something for fun).
It goes to show how sometimes it’s not just because they’re enthusiasts though but because they’re actually nuts. Seeing as this guy was a judge I doubt there would be any way of stopping him from stockpiling that much weaponry.
Well isn’t that exactly the point? What possible reason does a murderer need with 47 guns and 26,000 rounds of ammunition? He only has two hands and couldn’t conceivably carry a tenth of that at any given time.
There’s a few reasons people collect guns. Some people just like guns, and appreciate the craftsmanship and variety of weapons. Like any hobby, it’s easy to end up with way more stuff than might seem reasonable to an outside observer.
But this guy was a judge. If he was an avid stamp collector, and had a basement full of stamps, nobody would care that he had an obsessive hobby until he decided to dissolve his wife in a vat of stamp preservative or whatever. 47 might seem like a reasonable number of guns to a lot of folks, but we can all agree that’s still more than anyone needs for things like hunting or self defense.
Another reason to collect guns is because you’re prepping for… something. Collapse of some sort, or maybe the government is going to start piling up bodies so they can take guns from cold, dead hands. Whatever happens, you’re going to need weapons in all calibers, and ammo will become the new currency.
But again, this guy was a State Supreme Court Justice, and not for some podunk state like that one state we’re all thinking of. No, he was among the top jurists in Califuckingfornia, a high arbiter of justice and the rule of law in the most populous and prosperous state. If this piece of shit was also a prepper, what in the sam hill is he prepping for?
There are probably other reasons to have a big collection of guns. But given that he murdered his wife, I think we can agree that his specific, violent version of crazy is relevant to the conversation.
Yes you got the point. I’ve heard that in Israel you can have one gun. When you leave the shooting range you must buy 50 bullets. If you go back and have less than 50 bullets, they need you to justify why that’s the case, or they refer it to police or something. I know something like this would not fly in America, but maybe it’s a regime we could work our way towards
Yeah, it’s pretty easy to tell that you haven’t been around guns much. 50 rounds isn’t much and isn’t reasonable for any purpose from hobby to sport usage or even proficiency for someone who uses them professionally. The amount of ammo I shoot on any given range trip? Varies from 20 to hundreds and hundreds of rounds; it depends on the day, weather and dozens of other factors. Even the concept of only being able to buy a single box the day of is hugely problematic. For the most common calibers like 9mm prices over the past decade have varied from less than $ .30 a round to over $2.00 per round, if you could even get it. There have been periods of months to years where getting a single box every 3 months was difficult/near impossible. I have one rifle that is a family heirloom that I haven’t found ammunition in stock for over a decade and have never shot it since inheriting it.
The ammunition market is 100 times more volatile than a cardboard box soaked in gasoline holding 100lbs of gunpowder. Having a few thousand rounds doesn’t mean you’re planning anything bad, it’s a drop in the bycket to sustain occasional shooting for 6 months despite never ending supply issues that have been going on for years. If I see ammo at a fair price I buy as much of it as I can. On any given day I might be able to shoot half of the guns I own if I so desire due to the availability of ammo, and that includes the stuff I make on my own in my garage.
I’ve been around guns. I know 50 rounds is practically nothing. I was shocked when my friend explained the law there to me. Just providing an alternative perspective
Limiting ammunition isn’t effective, Limiting magazine capacity on the other hand. I live in Europe where firearms are heavily regulated, yet they don’t care about the amount of ammunition. In fact, you always get a 30% discount if you buy bulk and bulk means per 1000 for quality and per 1400 for surplus. If you have 6 different calibers it adds up quickly. That’s how much they care. There is a limit on the weight of total gunpowder before you need a fireworks storage permit though… there are a lot of gun owners in Europe, but we don’t practice in schools and shopping malls, I don’t know what is wrong with America
I also don’t know what is wrong, but as a citizen here, I’d like to try anything and everything to prevent mass murder. I don’t see how limiting ammunition wouldn’t work towards that goal
I also like firearms. And I am a normal european 9to5 guy with a job in health care. Over here being interested in firearms means nothing, it’s not different from, let’s say, owning a horse ;)
47… the cheapest one was probably 500$ or so. This is fetish. What the hell are you going to do with them all? I can think of 3 or 4 models I need and the rest of my stockpile just needs to be ammo for them.
To elaborate… Need as in some kind of self defense scenario or even as a survivalist. There are 4 firearms I would probably want to have, each having a specific purpose. But that is it. Having 47 is like a cat lady or something. To me it is weird and unnecessary.
This is America, I have no problem with people owning guns. I support gun restrictions and the banning of automatic assault rifles as well. That is common sense to me.
You think this guy has 47 guns because he’s scared? Really???
Edit: sure keep down voting me. No one buys 47 guns because they are “scared”. Clearly this guy loves guns and collects them for fun. He’s still a POS but describing what drives his behavior as “scared” just makes you look completely out of touch with reality, which doesn’t help improve the overall situation.
That’s not really a fair comparison though. They all handle and fire different. This piece of shit is still a piece of shit, but collecting different guns is more akin to “I participate in 10,000 point fights with my choice of Orks or Blueberry Spacemarines” than toasters.
Guns are a stupid and dangerous hobby, though. If Warhammer was responsible for thousands of deaths per year, I would not want to contribute to that, and I’d find something else to do.
At least we agree that it’s mostly the shitheads that are the problem, not so much the hobby. I’m pretty sure this shithead would have killed his wife if his hobby was hiking or cosplay too.
Ever hear the story of the nuclear boy scout? Now thats a hobby no one should be allowed to have.
You can wax hypothetical about what abusers would have done, but they overwhelmingly use guns, since they’re great for threatening people or executing them in an instant with a slim chance of survival or intervention.
Shitheads get into all hobbies. Some hobbies are more dangerous than others, and need more safety than others.
You know what’s a dangerous hobby that ALSO appeals to masculinity-troubled people? Modding cars to go faster and drift harder. You can tool around in them legally and if you drive like a shithead you can drive through a crowd. Modding pickups is also a big shitwaffle magnet. Still a hobby.
I avoided the whole “are guns the problem” subject in my comment for a reason. My comment served to illustrate that collecting large numbers of “Object” is a hobby. Whether or not the hobby is good, or bad, or dangerous, or safe, was not my comment.
No, it was a correction of how people collecting guns is not like collecting the same toaster over and over, more like different toasters, specifically not addressing anyone’s use of them.
But you’re specifically asking people to not treat gun collectors like toaster collectors.
If someone had a collection of 50 toasters, people would find that weird, but generally harmless.
But if that person then claimed to not be even slightly interested in toast, that would immediately set off warnings in people’s head.
Why would they collect so many toasters if they didn’t like toast? It’s what toasters are for. Sure, they could maybe find some off label use for them, but that still makes it a weird choice of hobby.
I’d definitely think they were much more interested in toast than they let on and if they were one day caught eating toast with a full erection, I wouldn’t be even slightly surprised.
Since it seems like you’re new to the internet then, you shouldn’t put information that makes you easily identifiable right there in your username.
Also, the number 88 is used as a dog whistle by neo-nazis, so that other neo-nazis on social media know who to support without the trauma and physical pain of thinking for themselves.
But now we’ve sorted the 88 part out, what about the ‘Atticus’ bit? It’s such an uncommon name. In fact, the only ‘Atticus’ I can think of it fictional former rights activist turned pro-segregation racist Atticus Finch.
Don’t be a moron. He’s out on bail for the same reason police get it, if you put and judge or cop in prison they get murdered. If they aren’t guilty that’s a huge fucking risk, it’s the same for pretty much anyome but not everyone plays for the same team.
If he took all of his weapons and all of his ammo to a shooting range, and if he prepped to the best of his ability before beginning, how long would it take for him to shoot off all 26,000 rounds, if he tried as hard as he could to fire them off as quickly as possible? By himself, with nobody else helping, just to be clear.
It really depends on what the breakdown is and how many magazines he had and what the breakdownin ammo was. If everything was loaded ans laid out it could be done in a day that’s 10-12 hours, if you don’t care about keeping guns usable you could probably do it faster. It’s all about reload speed and managing heat, endurance would be a factor as well. You can pretty easily attain a 4-6 rounds per second with most guns, world record levels are more like 10 per secondwith a pistol. Bushmaster claims and effective 45 rounds per minute with their ar 15, which would be just under 10 hours.
Shooting is the easy part, you can probably sustain about a round per second. Reloading magazines probably takes 5 times as long, so let’s say 10 rounds per minute, 600 per hour. If he’s there for 8 hours that’s 4,800 per day so he could git 'er done in about a week.
I have another random thought: if his wife’s father or brother or other similarly-inclined-for-justice sibling were given all the ammo and weapons, and they were both placed in a forest on an island, with the condition that only one can come out alive, and if it’s this pig-looking motherfucker, then he gets skinned alive and then eaten by a hippo - how long could he put off the inevitable?
This is why it should be illegal for conservatives to own guns or hold positions of power. Any group of people so notoriously anti-education but pro-slavery should be treated a bit differently in polite society.
Every act of racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia and antisemitism comes from conservatives. Almost every domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history has been by conservatives. This is much, much more than a difference of opinion on political views. Conservatives are dangerous. Armed conservatives are deadly.
IIRC California requires background checks every 6 months to order ammo, and it can only be shipped to licensed ammo dealers, which charge a fee, and then picked up in person. It makes sense for California gun owners to buy bullets in bulk quantities.
Bud get it in your brain: you will not solve the sort of problem that might require 26,000 rounds, as you are not a regimented militia or national guard. If we get invaded by ground troops from Canada or something, and we actually needed to call up militias, the government already has the guns and ammo stockpiled and will drop them off at your door, probably after seizing Amazon under the Defense Production Act.
Again, the problem you think you’re solving with 26,000 rounds isn’t legitimate. You’ve imagined it. You’re not Rick Grimes, you’re “unamed screaming guy 7.”
Well, I wasn’t talking about myself. I do have a moderate quantity of ammo but its a “better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it” philosophy for me.
Also I have some surplus stuff that was super cheap at the time and unobtainable today.
I certainly don’t like the idea of waiting for someone to drop off tools to defend myself as you suggested.
If you are a hobbyist shooter then it is common to buy ammo in bulk. And if you’ve never done competitive shooting or even just going to the range once a month, you may not realize how fast the ammo is used up.
The 10th Amendment grants all police powers to the states unless enumerated otherwise in the Constitution (such as is the case with interstate commerce). And states may not enact laws that supercede federal laws per the Supremacy Clause. This is important when applied to arms as they are protected by the 2A in the Constitution, which is the highest law in the land.
As for general welfare, that’s targeted at federal spending. A common place where it applies is that it empowers the federal government to grant crop subsidies to farmers.
That’s why when someone commits a crime like murder it’s under state jurisdiction. Unless that particular case occurred on federal land or involved cross state travel, then that would become a federal case.
Ammunition prices fluctuate drastically with global and national events. In 2021 when COVID hit 9mm cost roughly 70 cents a round. Today it’s around 19 cents a round. There’s a buy cheap stack deep philosophy practiced when buying ammo.
A competition shooter or someone attending a class can easily shoot 1,000 rounds over a weekend. Buying in large volume when prices are low means that weekend costs $190 not $700.
Get a new hobby? One that doesn’t threaten everyone around you, maybe? Maybe one that’s just overall cheaper.
I have zero problem with hunting, target shooting, collecting. One poster here says they have 4,000 rounds; shoots trap every weekend, buys them on sale. Fine.
This dude had 26,000. That is a compulsion. He thought amassing ammo would solve something for him. Would provide him something he lacked. Probably something subconscious. Some deep-seated fear.
As to the rest of us, it solves nothing legitimate, certainly nothing the Second Amendment was directed toward.
What harm can practically be done by one man with 26,000 that couldn’t be done with 4,000 or half that? If we stick with the 9mm metrics 4,000 rounds would weigh just past 100lb (45 kilos) @ 115g rds. 26,000 rounds of it would be 3-4x the weight of the average man at about 650lbs (294 kilos).
That volume only benefits consistent use over weeks/months/years, something fortunately not found in the cases where people abuse firearms to harm others.
26,000 is a lot, but with no other context it’s not an indicator of “crazy”.
As others have said: ammo is cheaper in bulk. It doesn’t “go bad” if stored properly, and you need different rounds for different guns. And for a while it was hard to find – you stocked up when you found it because you didn’t know when it was going to be available again.
1000 shells of 12 ga – that’s two cases, I have to drive a long way to find them, and I shoot trap every other week. 20ish shells, 12 ga slugs – left over from hunting I have 1050 rounds of 9mm, because I bought 3 cheap boxes of Blazer Brass on sale and that’s what I shoot at the range. 800ish of 7.62x54r – 2 spam cans, for the same reason. Probably 1500ish rounds of .22lr – 3 boxes of 500 rounds… same reason.
I’m not a nut, but if the cops raided my house the headline would be “found with over 4000 rounds of ammunition!!!”
It’s not a random stat like Pokemon cards. You’re being obtuse. It would be more like “Woman with extensive collection of flares, matches, and gasoline burns down house” and “man who owned numerous police scanners and maps of escape routes evades police.”
The “actual situation” is that he had a collection of 47 weapons that enable murder and he murdered someone with one of them. Your analogies are absurd.
There are multiple articles on this situation. This particular article was written because of the somewhat unique weapons cache. Other articles will be written about mental health, without a doubt
It’s almost like they want to continue to demonize normal gun owners (yes there are dozens of us left leaning gun owners). I’m kind of fucking sick of it but the rich folks that want us disarmed have enough to keep funding the meessages.
You’re not normal if you have 26000 rounds of ammo. I have 5 guns and don’t have 500 rounds. 26000 rounds sounds like someone with a dooms-day mindset preparing for anarchy.
I think it’s relevant to note that someone mentally unwell enough to kill another person (especially their own spouse) was able to hoard such a large amount of weapons.
I guess the rest of us are just lucky that he only wanted to kill one person, instead of several.
Devil’s advocate here. Where is the line? In an extreme example, ADHD is a mental condition so maybe they shouldn’t have guns?
In a more nuanced example, what about the trans community? Some say it’s mental disorder, some don’t. So should they or should they not have any firearms. Highest cause of gun death is actually suicide and trans community has high rate of suicide.
The point I’m making is, I think we can agree some extreme examples are very easy to distinguish. But it is a very slippery slope where people’s rights could be taken away without proper due process. Basically, at the mercy of the current administration’s opinions rather than the actual facts of the situation.
Your examples are extremely dismissive of a link that is actually there. He owned a fuckload of guns and used them to murder his wife. Not only are your crimes less serious, they’re not related to the hobby at all.
Regardless, the people claiming “what’s the big deal, so he owned a bunch of guns” clearly have no idea how it looks outside of pro-gun circles (and outside of America).
If he had been charged with sexual assault and the headline said that he owned a sex doll, you might say “so what?”. If he was charged with sexual assault and he owned 48 sex dolls, you’d be treating it like a red flag.
Yeah. I think the previous domestic disputes and alcohol abuse are more relevant to the domestic violence. If he didn’t have a gun, it would have been a fist.
"First things first, I just want to say the fact that the murderer had 47 guns and 26,000 rounds of ammunition sheds no light on his personality or the crime."
If he regularly shot pictures of women or something sure but owning a lot of guns or buying ammo in bulk isn't really any indication of domestic violence. The son even said there wasn't a history of violence. It seems like the heavy drinking or arguments have more correlation than anything.
Media outlets often cite things like how many guns someone has to freak out people who don't know about guns. All the dude needed to fuck up was a single handgun and a single bullet. If he was drunk he shouldn't have even been carrying. And being drunk isn't really a good argument for why someone got violent.
Violence was a thing before guns existed. If I got stabbed I'm not going to think, "Thank goodness I wasn't shot." I suppose I'll have plenty of to think about it while waiting for the cops to show up though.
Cherry picking and a lack of controling for confounding variables is an issue when people try to make the claim you did. There is also a lot more going on than just gun laws. When normal people don't benefit from our GDP it really isn't a good benchmark for comparable countries. When people have a lack opportunities or lack social programs there will probably be some social problems.
If I had time enough to ponder my injuries after being stabbed, the thought “at least I wasn’t shot” would absolutely cross my mind. But maybe that’s just an American thing
Nobody is claiming the guns invented violence, they’re pointing out how guns turn emotions into murders faster, and with more lethality, that any other form of violence.
Then of course there’s the usual “I will only consider the idea of not selling guns to deeply and blatantly damaged people after you cure every single person in America of every currently incurable mental health issue and build a perfect utopia of equality and free hugs”.
But I’ve got an even better idea: we could just ignore what the gun lobby and pro-gun crowd wants and address things now, without their rubber stamp of approval.
My original statement was that owning a lot of guns wasn't suggestive of anything. The comment suggested there was a "correlation" with owning guns and domestic violence in response.
That is a different statement. It's saying abusers can be more dangerous with a weapon. It does not follow that people who own a weapon are somehow more likely to be an abuser.
To make that argument it would need to say something about what percentage of gun owners commit abuse or some kind violent crime.
You can find higher rates of domestic violence among cops for instance so maybe you could argue cops are more likely to be abusers.
Correlation isn’t causation. Example, we all have drunk water. Everyone dies at some point. I found correlation that drinking water causes death 100% of the time.
The number of guns isn’t the issue, it’s what he’s choosing to do with them. There are legitimate reasons to own them that are not malicious. Gun collection for example. There are some wacky designs out there. Look up the forgotten weapons YouTube channel for examples.
Yeah because having so many guns you literally have a gun on your ankle while also being a belligerent drunk doesn’t prime you more for murder the next time you “lose it”.
Guns make murder literally child’s play. If he wasn’t such an ammo sexual he may have slapped his wife and gotten beaten up by his son and landed in the drunk tank, but because a gun was easier and more available his first round of reported domestic violence was lethal.
Wife stopped him from committing suicide and he eventually killed her. This dude deserves to be strapped to a cannon so his chest can be blown out. I can’t imagine how their son feels finding out his dad is irredeemable trash who would execute his mother, and basically losing both parents in a night.
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