David and Daniel Grinnel were recently busted for illegal gun possession in their quiet Nassau County, New York subdivision. As wnyt.com tells the story, “They’re under arrest on federal weapons charges. Police said they found 16 long guns in their home. Some of the weapons were modified to make them illegal, including sawed off barrels, fully automatic and collapsible stocks. Police also found nine handguns and high capacity ammunition magazines. They said neither Grinnells had a New York State pistol permit.” And we heard about it because a reader emailed us claiming that, “I helped bust him (I was aided by a fellow IRC chatter)” . . .
I read TTAG a lot, and I wanted to know how you guys feel about the morality of gun owners reporting illegal guns?
We reported him because he made a lot of comments that we felt were not jokes but actual serious declarations of violence and of an unstable mindset. It to me was not so much about the fact he had illegal guns but the fact that he seemed crazy.
The divisiveness on IRC ran the gamut from “they did nothing wrong and you are total bastards for reporting them” to “you guys did the right thing, the laws suck but don’t break ’em”. I wonder where most TTAG readers stand.
Which made us wonder, too. Have you ever dropped a dime on a gun owner you thought was dangerous – either to himself or others? Would you?