Good thing this guy doesn’t have an Arabic sounding name, or speak with a funny accent, else he’d be in real trouble.
A 65-year-old Spokane man has been ordered held in custody on federal charges of illegally possessing automatic weapons and illegally storing explosives in a Bellevue commercial storage shed while agents investigate how he came to possess a huge military-grade arsenal that included … 37 machine guns, 12 silencers, two grenade launchers, more than 60 high-explosive grenades, several pounds of military-grade C-4 plastic explosives and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
[…] At a detention hearing set for Friday, [Asst. US Attorney Thomas] Woods said he will present evidence that Struve possessed “anti-government material.”
According to a complaint filed earlier this month, Struve “planned to use the items at some uncertain date in the future.”
[ATF Special Agent Heidi] Wallace, who was at Struve’s court hearing Tuesday, said there was no evidence at this point that Struve was involved in domestic terrorism.
No evidence he was involved in domestic terrorism? Uh… how about the 37 machine guns, 12 silencers, 60 grenades and several pounds of military-grade C-4, not to mention…
One box contained 54 M406 high-explosive grenade rounds — 40-millimeter shells that can be launched from a shoulder-fired weapon to distances of 300 yards or more, according to military specification.
Its explosion creates a “kill radius” of up to 16 feet from the point of impact and injuries dozens of yards beyond that.
What’s that make him… a collector? A Second Amendment enthusiast? A grenade-launcher rights advocate?
Actually, what I’m guessing this makes him is white, considering that dark-skinned people with foreign sounding names are routinely convicted as terrorists in the press, and then in the courts, simply for talking about fantastical plots to wreak havoc in impossible ways with weapons they’ve made no serious effort to obtain. But this “heavyset and bearded” white guy with the huge cache of illegal weapons and the “anti-goverment material”…? There is absolutely “no evidence that Struve assembled the arsenal for terrorism purposes.”
So don’t you worry. He’s not a terrorist. An ATF agent said so. And the agent must be right, else both the Times and the P-I wouldn’t have credulously repeated the assertion.
Hey, maybe he needed the grenade launcher to protect his home. Didn’t think of that, did you?
Innocent until proven guilty?
Well, look the second amendment says he has the right to keep and bear arms. And the us supreme court says it’s his individual right. And “arms” means greanade launchers and things like that. And it’s totally in synch with the purpose of the 2d A. as found by the court: to ensure no despotic govt. can take over. I mean, come on, you don’t expect us to fight the US Army with handguns and shot guns do you?
So any reasonable lawyer, relying on that US Suupreme Court case, would tell you he has a fair shot at avoiding any conviction because any law saying he can’t keep that stuff is unconstitutional.
shit man, the Court said he could bear that stuff….walk down the street with his grenade laucnhers….(but he can only bear it, he can’t “brandish” it. So he has to bear it nonmenacingly).
See how clear things are?
The man who’s blog lives by the double standard is now complaining about a double standard? That’s rich.
I suspect that we are going to see a resurgence of the white-power cults, especially in this area of the country.
Most of the federal agents (FBI, ATF, etc.) are professionals who will enforce the law and protect the Constitution, without bias.
But you’ve got to worry about the few who, after making an arrest such as this one, will wink at the suspect, and say something like “….I’m not saying what you are doing is wrong, or that some of us here don’t support you. I’m just saying that you have to do it in such a way so you don’t get caught….”
What was WACO all about?
The gubmint wants to grab my guns!!!
Patriots! A call to arms! Join the militia!
Goldy says the the ATF agent said he’s not a terrorist. No, she said that there was no evidence at this point that Struve was involved in domestic terrorism.
“Two law-enforcement sources familiar with the case, but who spoke on condition of anonymity, used the term “Armageddon” to describe what Struve was apparently awaiting in stockpiling the weapons.”
Goldy is basically saying that there’s a double standard here. If this guy was a Muslim, he’d be labeled a terrorist.
Well, there’s a good reason for that. Muslims have terrorism in their blood.
Somehow I’m getting a mental image of an idea for a really, really bad movie: Rambo Goes Quail Hunting.
“Ya just gotta make sure them little bastards are really good’n dead, yanno?”
Not to worry. A grenade launcher and a box full of HE grenades in the hands of someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing takes care of itself. (Contrary to what Wikipedia says, they don’t arm 30 meters out from the muzzle, and you can blow yourself up with one of these. Just ask the grenadier I met in the hospital in Vietnam.)
@8 LOL
Yup – all that ammo was for duck huntin’ – there are a heck of a lot of ducks in the Bellevue area.
Question: why would he store all those guns and ammo in Bellevue when he lives in Spokane?
Methinks he would have missed Armageddon by a few weeks by the time he got to his WMDs.
If this guy was Arab american – they would have tried to lynch him and accuse him of trying to blow up the state…..
I’ve gotta go with rhp on this one. We’ve got a history of those nutcases in that part of the state.
OTOH, let’s not get too crazy about anything past this. I can remember when my old high-school buddy (we called him ‘Mohawk Bob’) was misidentified by some figures in law-enforcement circles on the Olympic Peninsula as being a leading figure of a group of neo-Nazi skinheads in the area. He was a skin alright. Mohawk Bob, the half-Makah, half-Mexican skin. Not all skins are racists, folks. It’s just another thing those pricks took for themselves, and everyone else got stuck with the same tag.
ER? No one has ever tried to ‘grab my guns’. That’s just made up. Waco was about a LOT of things at once…crazy cult, child abuse, and yes, illegal guns. I have my same half dozen guns, and no one (Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton) ever sent troops to my home to take them. But I didn’t have 5 dozen (illegal) machines guns, flame thrower and a dozen kids in a crazy religious end of the world compound…that might have SOMETHING to do with it…ya think?
Okay, let’s say this paranoid screwball armed himself against a commie takeover of America’s government, and then ask ourselves how this would play out on a battlefield.
He had enough weaponry to equip roughly half an infantry platoon, and enough ammo for one firefight.
Did this jackass actually think he could fight a government that has strategic and tactical bombers, cruise missiles, aircraft carriers, artillery brigades, and infantry divisions at its disposal?
One canister of napalm on his position and it’s over. But they wouldn’t even have to call the Air Force or Marines. A National Guard company would make short work of this guy and his ragtag army of friends.
This is not about some crazy ‘gun grab’ by the government. Look, you get pulled over for going over 55mph, that doesn’t mean the government is trying to ‘take all cars’. If you have a shed full of machine guns, the ATF/FBI will raid you and take them. That’s fair…it’s illegal (except for specific circumstances). If you don’t agree with machine guns being illegal, or the speed limit being 55mph, then work to change it. But it doesn’t mean any grand conspiracy to take guns.
Think of it this way. There are about 303 million people in the country. 21.6% own guns.
Roughly 65 million gun owners. 65 MILLION. So far I’ve heard of maybe a few dozen controversial “raids” by the ATF or FBI (including WACO). Lets call it a few hundred….hell THOUSANDS even. At this pace, if can can do a thousand raids per year, in a mere 65,000 years they ATF will have confiscated our guns! They are NOT ‘coming for our guns’, they’re just enforcing the EXTREMES of the law (machine guns and C4) They’d have take the guns from over 10 MILLION homes per YEAR to try to get away with that within a Presidency. They’d have to hire hundreds of THOUSANDS of ATF agents alone. This just is NOT going to happen.
“12. WSea spews:” ,
um that flame thrower was on a tank, that was used to burn, weman and kids alive.
you need to go relook at the video dude.
those people could have been talked out.
what happened there was stupid and needless.
RR @ 13: You are right, the military has gotten really good at taking out a position without incuring many casualties, using overwhelming firepower. Ask the Iraqi Army 1990 or 2003.
And a lot of these guys just have no idea how much ammo gets expended in a modern firefight. If you don’t have an immediate source of re-supply, you just aren’t going to be able to hold out for more than an hour or two, even with the impressive arsenal this guy collected.
Monday my wife and I saw the movie “Defiance”. I was a little distracted, as I saw so many basic mistakes being made, I couldn’t imagine a resistance force in occupied Bylorussia of any sort surviving for very long if they acted as they did in the movie. I presume that they were considerably more astute in real life than was portrayed in the movie.
“U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Alice Theiler ordered Struve held pending a detention hearing later in the week.”
Maybe that should read “detonation hearing”.
@14 You’re trying to argue logically to people with the reasoning ability of rocks.
@16 You may be onto something. Watching badly-scripted Hollywood action flicks may be where these yahoos get their ideas about strategy and tactics from. Lubricated by a few too many beers.
Revisionist pseudo-historian @15: Sorry, but the ATF and FBI didn’t have tanks or flamethrowers at Waco. They did have armored vehicles, but no tanks, and they did use tear gas, but no flame agents. The fire was set by Davidians.
Well guys and gals:
Barack Obama’s pick for “regulatory czar”, Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein said, “We ought to ban hunting, I suggest, if there isn’t a purpose other than sport and fun. That should be against the law. It’s time now.”
Maybe the heavyset and bearded Ronald Struve was preparing for that last great hunt before hunting is made illegal.
Remember Cass Sunstein is against meat eating AKA People Eating Tasty Animals (PETA) and wants to the lead the cause of establishing legal “rights” for livestock, wildlife, and pets.
Perfesser Cass said: “Animals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law … Any animals that are entitled to bring suit would be represented by (human) counsel, who would owe guardian like obligations and make decisions, subject to those obligations, on their clients’ behalf.”
Can you imagine all the lawsuits against most of the HA lefties here?
That’s my story and I’m sticking with it!