Imagine living close to Nevada and not using the ammo on a chance to fire some really kick ass guns. That state is like mecca for collectors and automatic weapon lovers.
Because, duh, when the new world order or lizard lasers or whatever it's called these days comes, that million rounds will be his gateway to keep his little empire so filled with freedom! For at least an hour or two!
Collector maybe? The article makes it sound like they may have been legally acquired prior to him being barred from owning them. That cache may have been worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from the machine guns alone.
I find it odd that no one has mentioned the possibility that he could have been a black market dealer. Suppressors, short barreled rifles, and fully automatic machine guns, are all purchasable in the US if you can file the right paperwork and be approved for those purchases by the BATF, under the National Firearms Act (NFA). This approval process includes the ATF having you on speed dial to show up and make sure you still safely possess said items, and aren’t flipping them on the street for a massive mark up.
While an NFA regulated suppressor might run you $1200 after taxes and fees, a suppressor on the streets without the paper trail might go for closer to 3-5k. Actual transferrable machine guns, due to their extreme rarity in the US, command prices from $10,000 to $60,000 dollars through existing legal channels, and again, could be sold at a massive markup without the baggage of a paper trail. Even firearms legal to own without NFA restrictions would command a sizable markup when sold off the books. And this is how gangs have armed themselves for decades, through dealers just like this.
Speaking as a very very casual gun enthusiast myself - - I think it's a tricky subject. Guns & ammo are great, a million rounds certainly seems excessive, and idk it's possible this guy was a black market arms dealer for very very bad people.
When you have guns, you wonder how you'd react to a knock on the door & an attempted gun confiscation. I don't see many scenarios playing out where violence is called for; they are not (directly) threatening my life, but rather confiscating tool(s) that can be used for hunting, recreation, and yes preserving my life in self-defense. Very not cool. But it's still technically not a physical threat to me. If I were to pop off some guns in defiance of a gun collection attempt, that would lend credence to the idea that I'm an "unstable person" that "shouldn't be allowed" to own firearms. Also, my fight isn't with the guy doing the confiscating. He's a member of my community, he's just some guy doing what he's told, maybe he's got a wife & kids. What is to be gained from shooting him in the face? Does that not make me a monster? Maybe this guy thinks similarly, he was confronted without a shot being fired.
No, from one red-blooded American to another, the no-conflict response is wisest & best. Tell them a warrant is needed, when they can't find what they're looking for, give them the ol' classic "lost the guns in a terrible boating accident" line. They will be forced to accept it & move the fuck on. When tyranny reigns, defiance is duty, avoidance/lies/concealment are justified.
My line of thought is this: you can have twenty safes full of badass guns & ammunition in your basement. But that doesn't matter if you've got a gun to your head on your front porch. What is practical? What is reasonable? What is necessary? Just a handful of nice guns made ready & accessible, a daily carry you're familiar with, a solid 12-ga, a .223 hunting rifle, and a few thousand rounds of ammo for each caliber you own.
My gut tells me this guy wasn't a prepper, if his ungodly massive stores of firearms & munitions were so easily found & rounded up. At least not a good one. My gut tells me this guy was involved in the illegal arms trade, he had a setup in his home that no-gooders could visit & "shop" for what they needed.
Yup. The guns aren’t there for when a cop is knocking on your door. The guns are there for when a cop is raping your wife.
And if people think that latter scenario unrealistic, just look at history. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the reason we have a government-recognize right to guns is to prevent that absolute power from existing as a state of affairs.
It’s okay if the government has the majority of the power. It’s okay if the government has relative power. The guns are here to prevent the government from having absolute power. That’s the kind of scenario where the women are getting raped by the men in uniform, while the men who arent in uniform either watch helplessly or get tortured to death for trying to intervene.
I’m old enough to remember the start of the ammo shortage, it coincided with massive ammo orders from the TSA of all government organizations. They placed massive orders for ammo, completely wiping everything out at the stores. Then, once it was back ordered for months the demand never went back down, nor did the prices.
The article says that the man is prohibited from owning firearms, so he probably has a felony or something. I'm not sure about California, but you wouldn't need any kind of special license to own all of those guns and ammo in a lot of states.
Machine guns are illegal unless you have a... Class 3 permit? It's a hassle so nobody does it.
The qty of ammo isn't illegal but really really above normal. The assault rifles are more of a buzzword unless they are burst or full auto, in which case would be illegal.
Most states don't require licensure at all. You complete a background check at time of purchase as required by federal law, and if you aren't a felon or prohibited for other reasons, you proceed with the purchase.
Yup it's totally fucked up. After I picked out my handgun it took 15 minutes after that to complete my purchase. Ordered my food right after they started the background check cause I thought it might take a while. Got my firearm and my food was still hot when I got back.
There really needs to be more before being able to buy a firearm. At the VERY least training and safety courses. This is where my opinion gets considered controversial, but if we had a better health care system I think annual mental health checkups for gun owners should be a thing.
Because they are illigal immigrants, cant own a gun if you are not a legal resident sooooooooo the question is not why did he have guns but why was he here?
Saw a police shooting video recently where the suspect barricaded in a car with a hostage. Suspect returned fire (full auto).
After the police shot him and freed the hostage, they went to clear the gun. It was a full auto HK UMP, which civilians in the US cannot legally buy or possess in any practical scenario (yes I am aware a SOT could have one for LE demonstration but that's relatively rare and not what this was).
In other words full auto MGs are being used by criminals who have cartel connections. The cartels get them from Mexican or South/Central American police and military who either are corrupted and resell the weapons, or are overt criminals themselves.
US has created a clown world where middle class software engineers are being hassled by the feds over having a braced AR pistol. ATF has jailed people over a drawing on a flat piece of metal. Meanwhile criminal element are running around with full auto UMPs and illegally modified Glocks. It is the exact opposite of what should be happening.
Ok, and I’ve done a shit ton of drugs in Dayton, I get like police chiefs and gang members getting automatic weapons. But this guy seems like a collector and not an arms trafficker (well non-collection trafficker) or something similar. As a person in some seedy shit I just don’t get how you’d even bring that shit up.
Though as I say this I realize I have gun friends and am probably less degrees of separation from buying a machine gun than I think I am. That’s concerning.
As someone else mentioned, it's likely he was a black market seller.
Machine guns can go for $20k+, easy, people with the kind of cash to have a dozen and an ammo stockpile just for collection purposes are going to do it legally.
$20k+ is pretty standard for on register transferable guns. Off register illegal machineguns can go for much less than that, like Glock switches. Unless we're talking about already very rare models of MGs.
I didn't dig deep for the best prices, but found 9mm 100 counts on some bulk ammo website selling for $31.50. So back of the napkin math says $315,000. Realistically probably a good bit less if you're buying large quantities, but in any case, it's a lot of money's worth just for the bullets.
Large quantiy ammunition buying is super economical, it's fairly common to see groups of shooting enthusiasts all go in on a pallet of ammo and distribute the ammo amongst themselves. Buying that much alone is a bit strange, but depending on how often you shoot you can go through a loooot of amunition quicker than you realize. Not millions of rounds, but I wouldn't think twice of someone with a few thousand rounds.
Cheap non remanufactured range 9x19mm ammo is about 18¢ a round. Or ~$180 per 1,000 rds.
But prices vary drastically by cartridge. .22LR might only cost you 10¢ per round but .50 BMG might cost $3.20 per round (both non reman cheapest prices). Without knowing what cartridges they were and how many of each we can't really calculate the total value.
This is a good website for the actual market value of ammo:
I am pretty darn pro 2A to the point where I think mag caps are wrong, but even I can see value in amount of guns allowed on one premise type of law. I really don't want to see some small cult activate a group of home grown terrorists and then them all being able to instantly access weapons from one location. If you're rich enough to own like let's say more than 50 guns, your rich enough to pay for some of them to be stored off site and be swapped through if they want to play with their different toys.
Somewhere in another timeline, a person has asked "How on earth would gun laws actually stop a mass shooting like this one involving 11 machine guns and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition?" And then a timeline-traveler would have brought that person to this timeline, and shown them this article, where said individual was arrested ahead of time.
The guns included 11 machine guns, 133 handguns, and 60 assault rifles, authorities said.
A little confused by this... a majority of assault rifles are machine guns, no? And I can't imagine what other kind of fully auto weapon he could have gotten. What are the "11 machine guns", SMGs or LMGs/GPMGs?
Edit: He straight up just has belt-fed machine guns, how the fuck do you obtain 11 of those?