Police Seize Home Arsenal Fire Alerts Authorities to Nearly 500 (legal) Weapons

The Asbury Park Press ^ | 12-03-02 | Michael Clancy

[Iron Eagle]

Published in the Asbury Park Press 12/03/02 Fire alerts authorities to nearly 500 weapons By MICHAEL CLANCY STAFF WRITER FAIR HAVEN -- Three dump trucks removed an arsenal of live ammunition and almost 500 weapons -- all of them apparently held legally -- which police found in a home after the fire department responded to a chimney fire and the homeowner threatened the fire chief with a rifle, authorities said yesterday.

[myrabach]

All you have to do to "douse" a chimney fire, before it gets out of hand and sets your roof on fire... is to remove the source. Put the fire in the fireplace or woodstove OUT! Long time ago when I heated an 8 room victorian farmhouse with fireplaces... the first thing I learned was how to control a chimney fire.

From this report, the house was smokey... hardley enough to set the ammo off. What in the world were they doing carting off all his legally owned guns? Would that give the FD cause to carry off any other legally owned property? "Oh ummmm we gotta take that stereo outta here and check it for ummmmm smoke damage."

[Iwo Jima]

Pointing a weapon at a firefighter there to put out a fire is unacceptable. But owning 500 weapons, no matter how stored, by a man who lives alone is O.K. by me. Granted, it is unusual, but then so is a woman owning 500 pair of shoes. At least there is a potential practical use for 500 weapons.

[Catspaw]

Yes, it is unacceptable--and criminal--behavior. I hope he's prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

[wideawake]

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) was a German philosopher and scientist who apparently developed the calculus simultaneously with and independently from Isaac Newton.

He also wrote a philosophical work called La Monadologie in which he postulated that, (a) since all our knowledge is circumscribed by what we are personally able to understand and observe and (b) our senses and understanding are capable of being deceived, then it is impossible that the entire external world, including other people, may be figments of a deceived imagination.

The Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga has recently taken up the discussion of the issues Leibniz raised in that essay.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Attribute your experience to luck. There are many thousands who have lost their homes to chimney fires.

[wideawake]

Mistake in my last post. Should read:

. . . then it is possible that . . .

[bullseye1911]

"The ammo could have exploded and shot all over," McGovern said. "If it got hot enough and the gunpowder ignited, the rounds would have become projectiles shooting out of the home."

Absolute, unadulterated b.s, readily consumed by the sheeple!

[Catspaw]

All you have to do to "douse" a chimney fire, before it gets out of hand and sets your roof on fire... is to remove the source. Put the fire in the fireplace or woodstove OUT! Long time ago when I heated an 8 room victorian farmhouse with fireplaces... the first thing I learned was how to control a chimney fire.

And just how were the firefighters to know this chimney fire hadn't spead to the roof?

[Chancellor Palpatine]

The firefighters and paramedics I know, who do thankless jobs while unarmed and for not a lot of money, deserve to be able to be able to do their jobs without threat of violence when they go on runs. The toothless, wannabe militia terrorists who defend this lunatic are seriously making me sick to my stomach.

I hope this guy gets every penalty coming to him.

[justshutupandtakeit]

I would not want to live next to this guy. He sounds unbalanced, irresponsible and dangerous. Did he even know what he had? Could thieves have broken in stolen guns and he would have not even known what was missing?

I would look very carefully into his activities and acquaintances. The reason he did not want the firemen involved cannot be a good one.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Much more likely than not, a guy unhinged enough to have so many weapons and rounds would have expressed that he wanted the firefighters to leave, and when they refused, reached for it.

That is right, I said "unhinged". It isn't normal.

At the beginning of the thread, I wondered what his FReepername was, and I'm still wondering which fanatic poster managed to get hauled off.

[nepdap]

Avoiding chimney fires is the main job of chimney sweeps. Everyone with a woodburning fireplace should have their chimney regularly inspected and cleaned if necessary.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

I have mine done every year, without fail.

[error99]

Oh, THAT Leibniz ...
His thory was immortalized in the song:
"Sha-boom Sha-boom"
"Life is but a dream; sweetheart..."


Or maybe it was this one:
"Row Row Row Your Boat"
"Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily; Life is but a dream...."

[wideawake]

I agree.

It's one thing if an ATF agent shows up at your home in the middle of the night randomly demanding access to your home. It's another if a uniformed fire marshal tells you to evacuate your home in the middle of a fire.

I will add that this article says that the incident occurred in Fair Haven. This is a suburban residential community and not a semirural area. I.e. , this guy's roof is almost certainly about ten feet away from somebody else's roof. Fires in towns like this are likely to consume an entire block if they're not dealt with in time - if I'm not mistaken about ten families lost their homes in nearby Keansburg last year when a house fire got out of control.

[Revelation 911]

A chimney is built for smoke, not flame. A chimney fire is actually a dangerous condition where built-up creosote ignites, raises the temperature of the chimney dramatically, and begins cracking the masonry and flames start moving thru the cracks and into the house frame. A very real and very dangerous event.

you forgot the part where the flaming molten creosote washes from the chimney walls, out of the fire pit, on to your carpet like some Italian volcano

[RobRoy]

>>"Guns were just about everywhere you could imagine," McGovern said. "They were just scattered across the house." <<

Yeah, with little old men it's "guns." With little old lady's it's "cats." Sungirl comes to mind...

[blackdog]

I found that ammo does not pose a threat when exploding outside of a gun the hard way. I was about 12 years old and discovered the joys of gunpowder from my dad's shotgun shells(when they were paperboard too). Well, I ran the supply short and found some 30-06 rounds which rattled with a lot of powder. I put it in a bench vise. I figured a hacksaw was the best way to gut the thing. Well, the hacksaw combined with my young vigor heated things up and KABOOM! It blasted off the tip of my finger from the casing end, and also caulderized the wound instantly. I moped around in pain, grounded for a month, with a black fingertip like E.T.

On the firefighter, I question the choice of the M1 for anything other than taking it with you when leaving the house. The guy should have invested in a video system as well as the guns. The cops just want 500 free guns. The resident was stupid. The incident must not go the states way and become case law. I do not believe much anymore when hearing the states version of anything.

[Chancellor Palpatine]

I seem to remember reading about gun battles during either the Great Chicago Fire or the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake over home dynamitings for firebreaks. Apparently, the damage was much worse (and the affected neighborhoods burned anyway) because the property owners fought off the firemen.

[bullseye1911]

And I suppose you leave loaded weapons and ammunition lying about your home?

In fact, yes I do and so does everyone else who wishes to avoid the label "victim". (although, certainly not in the quantity this individual had.)