Federal agents on Wednesday morning hauled more than 120 firearms, including “machine guns,” out of the Ahwatukee Foothills home of a man suspected of shooting at a campaign office for the Democratic Party three times and posting bags of white powder labeled as poison near political signs.
Jeffrey Michael Kelly, 60, was arrested on Tuesday night near his Ahwatukee Foothills home by Tempe police who, according to court documents, used surveillance footage to find the suspect.
I do wish they’d stop citing weapons caches when making arrests. Just as many shootings are done by people with access to a single firearm as are done by people with over a hundred weapons.
If there were crated assault rifles, that would be worth making a deal about… but people are allowed to collect weapons in the US, and that doesn’t suddenly change anything when a suspect is arrested.
It can sometimes speak to the suspect’s state of mind. A large number of historical firearms neatly displayed in a secured room is different from 2 dozen loaded AR-15s strewn about in every room of the house “in case BLM comes knocking.”
When you get to hundreds of guns it is quite often a situation of compulsive hoarding. Not necessarily criminal, but often careless (as leaving unsecured firearms around is careless), and indicative of mental health issues.
Neighbors describe this specimen as a “January-6-type-guy” and avoided him.
Speaking as someone with his own gun collection, weapon collecting will always be considered eccentric at best. You’re going to have to live with that stigma.
While I generally agree with the sentiment… The type of person to shoot up a political campaign office is a threat to their community and shouldn’t have access to firearms.
What are the odds that he had “hundreds of firearms” properly secured? I highly doubt all of these weapons were properly secured with locks, in a safe, etc. and not at risk of an unauthorized individual gaining access to them easily.
Kind of a pointless thing to say, unless you have some breakthrough methods of how to identify the type beforehand…
It gets the views up. Same with ‘including “machine guns”’ even tho there is no real evidence of that, just:
“overheard mention” Top notch journalism.
To be fair, if the police aren’t providing additional info directly yet, what other reporting do you expect?
Not that what the police say is necessarily the truth about a situation either, anything they claim should be taken with at least a pinch of salt nowadays if not a whole salt lick.
Something verifiable would be nice.
he was trying to shoot people, politically motivated, and you don’t think it’s relevant that he owned enough weapons to arm a small militia???
But it should change. No one should be allowed to own weapons.
The problem with that is that everyone owns plenty of weapons.
Firearms make more sense stored at a range or hunting club, unless you live somewhere where you actually need one handy (for defense against large cats/bears for example), but pretty much everyone owns knives, rope, wire, ammonia and bleach, etc. and many own fertilizer, cars, chainsaws, and the like.
There’s absolutely no reason to store even a semiautomatic firearm at a place of residence though unless you’re rich enough to have your own security service and dedicated secure building in which to house the things. And handguns have always seemed pretty pointless to me (I’m sure someone must have a legitimate use for them that doesn’t involve aiming at people or use in a firing range, but I don’t).
As a person who has unfortunately been forced to use a firearm to defend the life of myself and my family during a break in where the guy had handcuffs etc, I read this as you telling me we should just be dead. if "you’re rich enough to have your own security service " you don’t need a weapon at all. The rest of us unfortunately may have to defend ourselves. I am aware this is only an anecdotal argument not a statistical one, but as the guy who did not have to watch unspeakable things happen to his family, I’m OK with that.
That’s just a fantasy that would require a magical wizard with near omnipotence to implement.
In reality, weapons are everywhere and millions are unregistered / unknown to authorities, in addition to the fact that tools and parts to build them are nearly ubiquitous. They will always exist regardless of legality, but we are fortunately endowed with the right to bear them so that no one is forced to be without any means of self defense.
Fuck off.