CHARLOTTE — Police said 71 guns were stolen while being moved from Bessemer City to Alaska and the safes they were locked in were later found busted open along a road in north Charlotte. One of the stolen guns has already been recovered from a convicted felon, but the gun owner says he’s praying the rest don’t end up in the wrong hands.
The gun owner hired movers to get his things from Bessemer City to Fairbanks, Alaska.
He said he doesn’t know how it happened.
Police found the empty safes on Vance Davis Drive earlier this month.
The safes had dozens of firearms in them.
“Oh, I was devastated,” said the victim who didn’t want to be identified.
The victim is a gun collector. The safes were supposed to be stored in public storage off West Arrowood Road until they could be sent to Alaska.
However, they were found dumped nearly 20 miles away along an industrial road.
“I tried to do everything right by the law,” he said. “I kept them all locked up all the time and then, this happens, so now, it’s pretty bad actually.”
The police report lists all 71 guns with an estimated worth of nearly $40,000.
The moving company told police they hired two movers from Craigslist.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers pulled a car over in south Charlotte weeks after finding the emptied safes on the side of the road.
Sylvester Miller, a convicted felon, was in the car and officers said he had a gun.
The firearm was traced back to one of the stolen guns from those safes.
He’s now facing charges, but it’s not clear if he’s being investigated as a suspect in the theft.
That sounds awful. Seventy one guns. So much for Craigslist.
I’m not sure how I would do it if I had to move that many guns that far away. I’d like to hear suggestions in the comments.
This is probably what’s happening to the P320. By the way, I don’t have a single pistol in my locker named Sig, and I don’t have a single pistol in my locker that has the tolerance issues between the slide and frame that the P320 does.
For those of you that say, “Well, he’s using a screw,” you’re missing the point. Watch the whole video before commenting or I’ll delete the comment. It’s getting hung on the sear if pre-tension has been applied as pointed out in the FBI report. Or there are manufacturing tolerance issues that could do the same thing.
Either way, this is a horrid, awful, terrible design. I would be ashamed to have my name on it. But not Sig, who has sued in court to block Washington’s police academy ban on P320s.
Then finally, James Reeves discusses how we got here with the Sig P320 being the sidearm of the DoD. Eh, I don’t know. I still think there was something afoul in the process.
As for his comparison with the Beretta and 1911, the Beretta was a fine pistol, and I’ll bet that in all of the 1911 failures (FTF and FTE) none of them were using Chip McCormick speed mags. I’ve never had any such failure with a 1911.
This is a great interview and one of the more interesting that I’ve had the pleasure to embed. I commend it to you.
If I wasn’t so jaded I wouldn’t hold the position that it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the DOJ harangued RBT into agreeing to retain all customer information (a change in policy) and then go after other manufacturers of this sort of device in court as a way of giving the next administration the ability to know who had them.
Cameron doesn’t seem to hold out much hope for RBT given the difference in design (lever versus cassette).
Great work. I’m a bit surprised they responded to the FOIA request by transferring the full FBI document over to anyone.
With this done now, it’s hard to see how the Sig lawyers or designers move forward without a whole host of lawsuits and without an announcement and complete recall of the firearm.
For the record, I have nothing that says ‘Sig’ in my locker. I don’t do striker-fired guns and I don’t do Sig. I have heard that this pistol was originally intended to be a hammer-fired gun and then later redesigned to striker-fired. If that’s true, they should have left it hammer-fired.
I knew that SureFire had a quick connect from their flash hider directly to a suppressor design, but I didn’t know that B&T had designed one before them. Apparently, SureFire doesn’t like the fact that B&T is making money off of their own design.
In today’s litigious society, I’m not sure I would have allowed pictures to be taken, or at least, I would have patented it long ago if I was a B&T attorney.
I couldn’t be less interested in what Navy SEAL umpty-so uses for EDC, or what Ranger bad boy carries in his Kydex IWB holster. That matters so little to me that I automatically switch off and find something else to occupy my time. Oh, and I couldn’t care less what the military uses or used. I will never switch to ceramic cartridge cases, and I have nothing that says Sig in my gun locker.
I am an engineer, and I love well-functioning machines, as well as machines that have been made with beauty. I also love that the guns that interest me have a relationship with the history of so many great men and my own country.
That’s why I admire Browning for the 1911 design, and Eugene Stoner for the AR-15 design (the genius of direct impingement putting the recoil in line with the bore axis still amazes me, along with the general reliability of the design), and so many men who contributed to lever action rifles. I want to see my 500 S&W magnum lever action rifle one day without having to spend the money at Bighorn Armory, and I wonder if it will ever happen.
I probably don’t need it because of .444 Marlin and 30-30 Marlin and 45-70 Marlin, but I want one anyway.
James asked some hard questions about the settlement, and this is a good video to help you understand what happened.
On the one hand, I understand the position taken by Lawrence. If you’ve invested millions of dollars in R&D, and then lost many more millions in legal costs, it matters to you and your employees what happens. You must ensure that you recoup costs.
On the other hand, they are just taking an awful beating in the comments. I mean, they are getting spanked to the point of blisters that they left Hoffman Super Safety behind. I know there have been some legal wranglings between then, but I also believe that the super safety is a much different design and was around long before RBT.
In any case, suffice it to say that this issue is probably not dead, especially as it pertains to a new administration that may not be as friendly.
Here’s a YT short on the Marlin .444, although I have to say that my .444 doesn’t have problematic feeding like his seems to. Maybe it’s a “Remlin,” although I don’t know if they ever made one after Remington took over.
The Marlin .444 is an absolutely awesome cartridge.
1 month ago
