California judge charged with killing wife had 47 guns, 26,000 rounds of ammunition: Court documents

How many rounds of ammo he had is not really relevant (unless he used all 26000 rounds of ammo or was in the process of using them).

That he killed the wife in front of the kid… that is relevant.

"First things first, I just want to say the fact that the murderer had 47 guns and 26,000 rounds of ammunition sheds no light on his personality or the crime."
Okay.
- If he regularly shot pictures of women or something sure but owning a lot of guns or buying ammo in bulk isn't really any indication of domestic violence. The son even said there wasn't a history of violence. It seems like the heavy drinking or arguments have more correlation than anything.
  Media outlets often cite things like how many guns someone has to freak out people who don't know about guns. All the dude needed to fuck up was a single handgun and a single bullet. If he was drunk he shouldn't have even been carrying. And being drunk isn't really a good argument for why someone got violent.
- If you are a hobbyist shooter then it is common to buy ammo in bulk. And if you've never done competitive shooting or even just going to the range once a month, you may not realize how fast the ammo is used up.
- No problem that exists today. Stocking up on ammo is for the unpredictable future. You only need one bullet for a regular murder right?
- 26,000 is a lot, but with no other context it's not an indicator of "crazy".
  As others have said: ammo is cheaper in bulk. It doesn't "go bad" if stored properly, and you need different rounds for different guns. And for a while it was hard to find -- you stocked up when you found it because you didn't know when it was going to be available again.
  1000 shells of 12 ga -- that's two cases, I have to drive a long way to find them, and I shoot trap every other week. 20ish shells, 12 ga slugs -- left over from hunting I have 1050 rounds of 9mm, because I bought 3 cheap boxes of Blazer Brass on sale and that's what I shoot at the range. 800ish of 7.62x54r -- 2 spam cans, for the same reason. Probably 1500ish rounds of .22lr -- 3 boxes of 500 rounds... same reason.
  I'm not a nut, but if the cops raided my house the headline would be "found with over 4000 rounds of ammunition!!!!"
- Ammunition prices fluctuate drastically with global and national events. In 2021 when COVID hit 9mm cost roughly 70 cents a round. Today it's around 19 cents a round. There's a buy cheap stack deep philosophy practiced when buying ammo.
  A competition shooter or someone attending a class can easily shoot 1,000 rounds over a weekend. Buying in large volume when prices are low means that weekend costs $190 not $700.
- What if you have to wage a war against emu’s?
- Well the guns enabled him to (allegedly) shoot his wife but it doesn't seem like he was planning to make 26 000 holes in her.
Yeah. I think the previous domestic disputes and alcohol abuse are more relevant to the domestic violence. If he didn't have a gun, it would have been a fist.
- Which she likely would've survived?
- Yes. Too bad he had all those guns within easy reach.
- Exactly
IIRC California requires background checks every 6 months to order ammo, and it can only be shipped to licensed ammo dealers, which charge a fee, and then picked up in person. It makes sense for California gun owners to buy bullets in bulk quantities.
But 47 weapons at home is excessive IMO.
- Yup, to add on, with all those restrictions somehow it's still a crime ridden mess over there.
It's kinda weird that they made this more about how much weaponry he has rather than about his mental health and the actual situation.
Weird take though - I kinda want more news with random stats.
"Woman with over 64000 Pokemon cards burns down house"
"Man who eats 16 slices of pizza that one time evades police"
- It's not a random stat like Pokemon cards. You're being obtuse. It would be more like "Woman with extensive collection of flares, matches, and gasoline burns down house" and "man who owned numerous police scanners and maps of escape routes evades police."
  The "actual situation" is that he had a collection of 47 weapons that enable murder and he murdered someone with one of them. Your analogies are absurd.

Take a moment to admire the marketing of the gun manufacturers for a minute. Like, imagine someone having 47 toasters.

Gun Manufacturers and the NRA (same thing) are good at what they do.

That's not really a fair comparison though. They all handle and fire different. This piece of shit is still a piece of shit, but collecting different guns is more akin to "I participate in 10,000 point fights with my choice of Orks or Blueberry Spacemarines" than toasters.
Noone needs that but that's a hobby.
- A hobby he killed his wife with because it's a hobby that appeals to shitheads.
- All toasters toast differently too.
- Guns are a stupid and dangerous hobby, though. If Warhammer was responsible for thousands of deaths per year, I would not want to contribute to that, and I'd find something else to do.
Easy to scare limp dick conservatives
- You think this guy has 47 guns because he’s scared? Really???
  Edit: sure keep down voting me. No one buys 47 guns because they are “scared”. Clearly this guy loves guns and collects them for fun. He’s still a POS but describing what drives his behavior as “scared” just makes you look completely out of touch with reality, which doesn’t help improve the overall situation.

Wife stopped him from committing suicide and he eventually killed her. This dude deserves to be strapped to a cannon so his chest can be blown out. I can't imagine how their son feels finding out his dad is irredeemable trash who would execute his mother, and basically losing both parents in a night.

That's so sad.
- This is the only comment in this entire post that makes any sense. Thank you.
Damn the dude might off himself then if he has a history of suicide. Bail maybe wasn't such a smart idea.

I don't mean he is not a piece of shit but

Who cares he has 47 weapons. You only have 2 hands. What you think he is going to do? Strap 30 glocks to his leg?

Who cares he has 26000 rounds. Do you know how heavy ammo is? What you think is he going to do? Walk around with a shopping cart full of ammo? Strap 50 magazines to his chest?

It still amazes me that people fall for this "quantity " argument. It means nothing. Someone is not more dangerous with 500 rifles or 5 rifles.

I think the point was that he was obsessed with guns.
- I also like firearms. And I am a normal european 9to5 guy with a job in health care. Over here being interested in firearms means nothing, it's not different from, let's say, owning a horse ;)
Well isn't that exactly the point? What possible reason does a murderer need with 47 guns and 26,000 rounds of ammunition? He only has two hands and couldn't conceivably carry a tenth of that at any given time.
There's a few reasons people collect guns. Some people just like guns, and appreciate the craftsmanship and variety of weapons. Like any hobby, it's easy to end up with way more stuff than might seem reasonable to an outside observer.
But this guy was a judge. If he was an avid stamp collector, and had a basement full of stamps, nobody would care that he had an obsessive hobby until he decided to dissolve his wife in a vat of stamp preservative or whatever. 47 might seem like a reasonable number of guns to a lot of folks, but we can all agree that's still more than anyone needs for things like hunting or self defense.
Another reason to collect guns is because you're prepping for... something. Collapse of some sort, or maybe the government is going to start piling up bodies so they can take guns from cold, dead hands. Whatever happens, you're going to need weapons in all calibers, and ammo will become the new currency.
But again, this guy was a State Supreme Court Justice, and not for some podunk state like that one state we're all thinking of. No, he was among the top jurists in Califuckingfornia, a high arbiter of justice and the rule of law in the most populous and prosperous state. If this piece of shit was also a prepper, what in the sam hill is he prepping for?
There are probably other reasons to have a big collection of guns. But given that he murdered his wife, I think we can agree that his specific, violent version of crazy is relevant to the conversation.
- Yes you got the point. I've heard that in Israel you can have one gun. When you leave the shooting range you must buy 50 bullets. If you go back and have less than 50 bullets, they need you to justify why that's the case, or they refer it to police or something. I know something like this would not fly in America, but maybe it's a regime we could work our way towards
Yeah I mean to be fair there are tons of gun enthusiasts that also have an insane number of guns and ammo (because they regularly go shooting at a range or something for fun).
It goes to show how sometimes it's not just because they're enthusiasts though but because they're actually nuts. Seeing as this guy was a judge I doubt there would be any way of stopping him from stockpiling that much weaponry.
Remember the shooting in Las Vegas?
Who cares he has 47 weapons. You only have 2 hands. What you think he is going to do? Strap 30 glocks to his leg?
Well he is from Cali, so yes. NY reload due to mag capacity issues.
So since the need for guns is a well regulated militia, per the second amendment, everyone should get to have 1 or 2 guns. No need for more

And to think that he was responsible for deciding the fate of others. SMH.

You know, I'll bet if anyone who wasn't a federal judge did this they'd be denied bail.

He's a California superior court judge, not a federal judge. Either way, probably not much of a flight risk.

Because it's a judge, white and had money
He has no more wives, so he isn't considered dangerous.
Its west coast. They let people out for multiple murder charges.
Source: was west coast and got tired of seeing mass murderers being released to our society only to do it again.
- What does the 88 in your username mean?
- Don't be a moron. He's out on bail for the same reason police get it, if you put and judge or cop in prison they get murdered. If they aren't guilty that's a huge fucking risk, it's the same for pretty much anyome but not everyone plays for the same team.
- ...and sooo I moved to Texas!
  lol
  I call Bullshit.

What a fucking piece of shit. Hope he gets fucked up in prison.

- I'm sure it worked that way for people he sentenced.

So much for CA not letting you own guns eh...

This is why it should be illegal for conservatives to own guns or hold positions of power. Any group of people so notoriously anti-education but pro-slavery should be treated a bit differently in polite society.

So, you want to discriminate people on a state level based on their political views?
- Every act of racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia and antisemitism comes from conservatives. Almost every domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history has been by conservatives. This is much, much more than a difference of opinion on political views. Conservatives are dangerous. Armed conservatives are deadly.
- We thought the /s wasn't necessary on Lemmy. But this comment disproves it.

Random thought that's totally pointless here:

If he took all of his weapons and all of his ammo to a shooting range, and if he prepped to the best of his ability before beginning, how long would it take for him to shoot off all 26,000 rounds, if he tried as hard as he could to fire them off as quickly as possible? By himself, with nobody else helping, just to be clear.

Feel free to throw out best case scenarios.

Shooting is the easy part, you can probably sustain about a round per second. Reloading magazines probably takes 5 times as long, so let's say 10 rounds per minute, 600 per hour. If he's there for 8 hours that's 4,800 per day so he could git 'er done in about a week.
It really depends on what the breakdown is and how many magazines he had and what the breakdownin ammo was. If everything was loaded ans laid out it could be done in a day that's 10-12 hours, if you don't care about keeping guns usable you could probably do it faster. It's all about reload speed and managing heat, endurance would be a factor as well. You can pretty easily attain a 4-6 rounds per second with most guns, world record levels are more like 10 per secondwith a pistol. Bushmaster claims and effective 45 rounds per minute with their ar 15, which would be just under 10 hours.
I have another random thought: if his wife's father or brother or other similarly-inclined-for-justice sibling were given all the ammo and weapons, and they were both placed in a forest on an island, with the condition that only one can come out alive, and if it's this pig-looking motherfucker, then he gets skinned alive and then eaten by a hippo - how long could he put off the inevitable?

Let me guess. Conservative?

Orange County. Lots of guns. Fairly safe bet.

47.... the cheapest one was probably 500$ or so. This is fetish. What the hell are you going to do with them all? I can think of 3 or 4 models I need and the rest of my stockpile just needs to be ammo for them.

Need?
- To elaborate.... Need as in some kind of self defense scenario or even as a survivalist. There are 4 firearms I would probably want to have, each having a specific purpose. But that is it. Having 47 is like a cat lady or something. To me it is weird and unnecessary.
  This is America, I have no problem with people owning guns. I support gun restrictions and the banning of automatic assault rifles as well. That is common sense to me.

If I could afford a million dollar bail I’d probably buy 69 guns too.