In October of 2017, a group of thieves stole 654 Beretta guns and other merchandise from a UPS terminal in Springfield, Missouri. The shipment was on its way to Bass Pro Shop and UPS had taken steps to make it difficult to get at the cargo.
The trailers with the guns had been parked back-to-back with the roll-up doors facing each other. Two longer trailers were then parked along those trailers to prevent anyone from backing a tractor up to the trailers and pulling them away.
Someone had hot-wired two tractor-trailers in the lot, investigators said, then used them to push and pull trailers around the lot until thieves could access the guns.
All of which took considerable time and effort. There’s apparently not a lot of overnight security in the UPS Springfield terminal.
The next day, a local moving company discovered that one of its trucks had been stolen. That was apparently the vehicle the UPS robbers used to haul away their loot. The truck was later found in Texas.
That led to a what sounds like some impressive detective work (read the details here) that resulted in the arrest of six men including Frank McChriston, who plead guilty to participating in the robbery last week.
One of the stolen guns was found when one of the crew members was arrested. As for the rest . . .
Authorities are apparently still searching for the guns.
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney of the Western District of Missouri declined to comment on the stolen guns Wednesday.
Court documents say one of the guns has been recovered — the handgun allegedly found Derrick White’s car.
It’s unclear where the other 653 are.
That’s 653 guns on the streets in the hands of criminals. Clearly, the solution to incidents like this is more and stricter gun control laws.
We need to raise the age for buying guns to 21. We need those who want to buy guns to wait ten days before taking possession of their purchases. We need to regulate private sales and make sure everyone who buys a gun from a private seller undergoes a background check. And we need to mandate that law-abiding gun owners keep their firearms unloaded and locked in a safe or they go to jail.
While we’re at it, let’s elect more astute, knowledgable legislators to tackle these tough issues.
Fair question. Rifles. They’re more powerful and cause more carnage when used with a pistol-grip. See @ScottPelley @60Minutes piece. To reduce semi-auto pistol deaths I’d have universal background checks and mandatory reporting on mental health.
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) November 16, 2018
Surely common-sense measures like these will do something about the epidemic of violent crime in this country.