Stolen guns in Davenport

Normally I would treat this as very serious (and it is). Forty-six guns were stolen from a home in Davenport, IA with several recovered in the hands of convicted felons. But since this is an opinion piece and not a news story, although hard to tell the difference sometimes, I would like to add my thoughts.

Bobby E. Thompson Jr., 21, was under investigation in connection with the shooting of another Davenport man when police said they found the stolen 9 mm handgun.

It wasn’t until police traced the gun they found at Thompson’s, [police Capt] Struckman said, that they realized they had a much larger stolen-guns case on their hands. The victim was out of town and didn’t know he’d been burgled, so he hadn’t reported it.

Here's where the sloppy-arsed reporting comes in:

It is worthwhile to note the gun collector did nothing wrong. He was properly licensed, and his arsenal was secured behind a locked door.

One, you don't have to have a license (yet) to have a gun collection in Iowa. I would assume she meant he had a C&R license to purchase them directly from a distributor.

And using the word "arsenal" instead of "collection?" Nice.

Apparently she can't remember her own written words:

As police and federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, ATF, agents continue to search for the weapons and the people who stole them, they hope to piece together how so many firearms made it, unnoticed, out of the house.

The owner was out of town. She just wrote that in the previous paragraph but must have missed it.

Too bad the guy didn't use supernatural powers to notice that he was broken into while he was elsewhere. I'll try that next time I'm out of the house for a few days.

Because the guy also had ammunition (what good is one without the other), Barb gives us some sad news:

The obvious sour note is the thieves are armed with loaded weapons. Secondly, if they had to buy the ammunition, police might have had a lead by connecting a specific ammo buyer to a specific stolen gun.

Maybe in Illinois where you have to have a FOID in order to purchase ammunition, but in Iowa you only need proof of age. How would they link "specific ammo buyer to a specific stolen gun" unless the firearm was one of only one made in all of God's creation and you can only buy the ammo from one store with 28 forms of ID?

I hope one of my readers can help me out there.

And then Barb tries her hand at comedy. Referring to the fact that the thieves left behind the more collectible firearms:

In other words, they didn’t fit in the waistband of a pair of boxer shorts.

More than likely they weren't fully automatic AK47s that could spray 500 rounds per minute. Thugs and drug lords prefer those.

I know a collector who has Winchester lever action rifles. Those not preferred by thugs and drug lords.

And they don't fit easily in the boxers. Or briefs, either.