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.
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.
So, you want to discriminate people on a state level based on their political views?
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.
How many rounds of ammo he had is not really relevant (unless he used all 26000 rounds of ammo or was in the process of using them).
That he killed the wife in front of the kid… that is relevant.
I recall some recent study that said most mass shooters follow a predictable pattern of buying guns, then amassing guns and ammo.
Nobody needs 26,000 rounds. There is no problem that any American can legitimately solve with 26,000 rounds. It’s a threat to everyone.
No problem that exists today. Stocking up on ammo is for the unpredictable future. You only need one bullet for a regular murder right?
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.”
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!!!”
I don’t have that right. The Constitution gives it to the federal government, it’s called general welfare, it’s called police powers. Article I stuff.
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.
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.
It’s kinda weird that they made this more about how much weaponry he has rather than about his mental health and the actual situation.
Weird take though - I kinda want more news with random stats.
“Woman with over 64000 Pokemon cards burns down house”
“Man who eats 16 slices of pizza that one time evades police”
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.
Perfect example of a blatantly intellectualy dishonest argument right here. Show me how Pokemon cards were designed to burn down a house.
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.
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.
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.
Well the guns enabled him to (allegedly) shoot his wife but it doesn’t seem like he was planning to make 26 000 holes in her.
But who’s to say he wasn’t about to kill 25,999 more people? Think of your children!
/s
“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.”
Okay.
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.
owns 47 guns, 26,000 rounds -> shoots wife
Never woulda seen that coming! Must be the booze!
owning a lot of guns or buying ammo in bulk isn’t really any indication of domestic violence
Good thing there isn’t a known correlation between gun ownership and higher rates of domestic homicide, right? That would totally destroy your argument. How embarrassing that would be.
@borkcorkedforks @MicroWave @andrewta @ivanafterall
So you’re explaining why most other nations who have gun laws have fewer gun deaths, right?
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.
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.
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.
But 47 weapons at home is excessive IMO.
I don’t mean he is not a piece of shit but
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.
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.
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 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 ;)
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.
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.
Take a moment to admire the marketing of the gun manufacturers for a minute. Like, imagine someone having 47 toasters.
Gun Manufacturers and the NRA (same thing) are good at what they do.
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.
Noone needs that but that’s a hobby.
A hobby he killed his wife with because it’s a hobby that appeals to shitheads.
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.
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.
