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.
Do you have a source for your data on the percentage of people who commit gun crimes based on number of guns owned?
The overwhelming majority of gun crimes are committed in relation to the drug trade, and otherwise ordinary crime. This isn’t a demographic that’s collecting guns; they’re using what they have access to. Meanwhile, I know tons of people that have multiple AR-15s, all configured differently, for different purposes. One for a basic two gun competition, one for home defense, one for a night match (usually with a suppressor; they’re great for minimizing smoke), and so on.
I’m personally likely in the top 1% or so of gun owners, because I have >10 firearms, plus a progressive reloading press. There are three that I use regularly, and some that I never use because they’re antiques.
My question is more on a per capita basis for those groups. Do people who own 1 or 2 guns commit crimes at a rate higher or lower than people who own 5+ guns?
Yes there are fewer people who own the 5+ guns, but is there a correlation between owning more firearms and committing crimes?
My gut feeling is that, the more guns you own, the less likely it is that you’re going to commit violent violent crimes. I don’t know if anyone tracks any kind of data on that though. People that collect firearms and/or are seriously involved in competition are not typically the people that will be involved in other illegal activities. But, again, I don’t think that there’s data to back this up.
My caveat on that is that there are non-insignificant number of high-volume gun owners that are committing gun crimes, that is, they’re violating the National Firearms Act by owning illegal/unregistered machine guns, unregistered silencers, Other Destructive Devices, etc., or are violating local laws regarding storage, etc. (There’s no storage laws where I live, and, uh, I def. have guns out pretty much all the time. But I have no kids, there’s always someone at home, and I’m in a very rural area where breaks ins are very rare.So I think that there probably should be a distinction between commission of violent crimes using firearms, or crimes related solely to ownership/possession.
I concur with your gut.
Hunter and have a small farm. My wife actually has more handguns than me. My primary use case for firearms is as tooling, but I totally understand the enjoyment from shooting sports and collecting.
I don’t see why your gut feeling matters at all. Lots of gut feelings are wrong. That’s why we have statistics to prove things.
I agree that it should be related to violent crimes, maybe with some semi-violent crimes like human trafficking, etc.
Sure, we should have the data, because more data is usually useful, but I’m not certain that it’s actually material.
Let’s say that, statistically, the people that owned >20 firearms were 100% more likely to commit a violent crime with a firearm than the general population. First, that’s still a very, very low percentage of people that own >20 firearms, second, any way you cut that, gun ownership is still a civil liberty in the US, and third, you’re still looking at correlation rather than causation, and I don’t know if a correlation–and remember, this is just a mental exercise, rather than any real statistics–gets you any closer to finding the real cause.
This is the same problem that you run into when you start talking about factors that make someone into a person that commits a mass casualty event; you can find a lot of factors, but simply having one or more of those factors doesn’t mean that you will commit a mass-casualty event, and not having any of those factors also doesn’t mean you won’t commit a mass casualty event.
But it should change. No one should be allowed to own weapons.
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.
Australia is a magical place, after all.
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.
Fuck off.
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???