What Army Was He Supplying (or Preparing to Form)?

PAGELAND, South Carolina (Reuters) - As sheriff’s investigators threaded past the battered cars, cast-off tires and rusted farm equipment cluttering Brent Nicholson’s front yard, there was no hint of the sinister stockpile hidden behind his windowless front door.

Inside, the guns were everywhere: rifles and shotguns piled in the living room, halls and bedrooms; handguns littering tables and countertops. Outside, when they rolled up the door on the pre-fab metal garage, more arms spilled out at their feet.

“This has completely changed our definition of an ass-load of guns,” said Chesterfield County Sheriff Jay Brooks.

  Yahoo

There were about 5,000. Five. Thousand. An "ass-load" indeed.

BTW, there s nothing inherently illegal about it. If some hadn't been stolen, that is. And that's the charge against him.

Lest you jump to any conclusions about his intentions...

“Everybody knew he’d buy guns; his father bought ‘em, his grandfather bought ‘em,” says Al Padgett, 68, who keeps a booth at a local flea market and says he’s known the family all his life. “He collected ‘em, hoarded ‘em, but I never knew him to sell a gun. Not one. He did everyone a favor keeping ‘em off the street.”

You never thought of it like that, did you? He was "keeping 'em off the street." Civic-minded citizen.

I suppose it's possible. At any rate, that's what I'd argue if I were his lawyer.

On Oct. 21, a sheriff’s deputy just over the state line in Union County, North Carolina, pulled Nicholson over for running a stop sign. Nicholson’s pick-up had bogus license plates – and the deputy noticed rifle barrels poking up from behind the seat when he approached the vehicle.

A search turned up 20 rifles, nine handguns and nearly 200 hydrocodone pills, arrest records show, and several of the guns were stolen. Nicholson was arrested for possessing stolen weapons, trafficking in opiates and vehicular violations.

Yeah, that's going to look bad.

“He was going up to Union County to do something with those guns; we don’t know what,” Brooks says. “We’ve got information that he was moving some of these goods and … we’re looking at his activities to see if he was part of something more organized.”

[...]

Ultimately, the courts will decide what happens to Nicholson’s guns. Brooks suspects many will be destroyed, particularly those with no serial numbers, because their rightful owners can’t be identified.

Some locals scratch their heads over that possibility, arguing that it’s a waste of good weaponry.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.