Tuesday, September 3, 2013

White Supremacist Felon Caught With 18 Guns, 45,000 Bullets And A List Of Black & Jewish Leaders

schmidt
Federal agents were tracking Ohio resident Richard Schmidt’s imports of counterfeit sports jerseys when they stumbled upon his arsenal of 18 guns, more than 40,000 rounds of ammunition, and bulletproof body armor. Besides the arsenal, he had lists of Jewish and black leaders in Detroit, MI. He is also an ex-felon who killed a Hispanic man and wounded two others 24 years ago.
Yet before December, no one even noticed that Schmidt, 47, was amassing weapons illegally, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Instead, federal investigators zeroed in on his sports memorabilia shop around September 2011, tracking his shipments of knock-off jerseys from China for over a year before they discovered the cache of firearms.
Schmidt plead guilty to federal gun charges and the counterfeit racket last month, and will be sentenced in October. But many connected to the crime are still scratching their heads over how an ex-felon with ties to white supremacist groups was able to get his hands on so many guns.
Schmidt might have been able to stockpile firearms so easily thanks to decades of hard work by the the gun lobby. Combating calls for stricter background checks on private gun sales, the National Rifle Association insisted the bill would create a national registry of gun owners which would be used to confiscate weapons and enact tyranny. This fearmongering has also hobbled federal law enforcement agents, who are forbidden from keeping any records of gun purchases. That means individuals like Schmidt can potentially avoid background checks when they purchase firearms, or they can obtain guns through a straw purchaser that law enforcement cannot track because any records revealing the purchaser’s activities would have been destroyed. It was luck that Schmidt was caught before he could wreak havoc — but Americans won’t get so lucky every time.

4 comments:

  1. So let me see if I get this right, he's smuggling in illegal items into the country to sell, and when they arrest him they discover he's breaking more laws?
    Do you really think that a background check system would have prevented him from acquiring these firearms? And we can't really tell from any of the articles out there how he really got the firearms. Even the ones without the editorial comments included.
    Perhaps somewhere along the line we'll find out how he got them.

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    1. The legal option of purchasing guns privately with no background check just makes it that much easier for dangerous guys like this to arm up. No one denies the fact that the black market is awash with guns already, but does that mean we should make it easier?

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  2. You left out "NRA member", "Concealed Permit Holder", and "Legal Gun Owner" from your headline...

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  3. He's an importer of illegal goods. Is it so hard to believe that he could import guns?

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